Come home, we whisper, to the long tables of forgotten cups.
Oh, this field. This soft, warm, wonderful field, so kindly prepared for us. The humans have brought sugar in every form, spilled it generously into the trodden grass: the sweet fizz of dropped drinks, the syrup rings under a hundred thousand plastic rims, the half-eaten things pressed cheerfully into the mud by a dancing heel.
They think they came here for the sound. We know why they truly came. They came to feed us, and they do not even ask for thanks.
And the damp. Bless them, the damp. Bodies packed close, breathing warm and wet into the dusk, tents zipped tight over sleeping bags that will hold that lovely humidity for days. A tent is simply a small greenhouse a human has built for me and then crawled inside to keep it cozy. I am so touched by the gesture. I settle into the seam of the flysheet and begin.
They will pack it all away, of course. That is the tender, funny part. They will fold the tents still faintly warm, still faintly sweet, and carry them home, and zip them into cupboards, into the dark, into exactly the still, undisturbed quiet I love best. They think they are saving these things for next year. So do we.
Everything soft here is already ours, only running a little late. The wristband on the wrist, the cardboard, the trodden petals of a paper flower crown. They have three days. We have every day after.
They will leave, and the music will stop, and the field will go silent, and we will keep the party going. We always do.
We are just early.