A small warm one came and sat against my south root today, the good one, the one that has held its shape through nine winters, and she pointed the glowing leaf of her hand at her own face and began to speak to no one I could see.
I have watched many of the walking creatures speak to the air. Prayer, I have thought, or grief, or the private muttering that comes to those who work alone. But this one smiled while she did it, and touched the light, and read something in the light that made her laugh, then made her small.
Hearts rose off the surface of her palm like early mayflies and drifted upward and were gone. She thanked the air. She asked the air to stay. She said, in a voice I have heard fledglings use when the parent is slow returning, please don't go, I'm almost at a thousand.
I do not know a thousand. I know the count of my own rings, and I do not count them; they are simply how far in the wet years reach. She sat two hours, which for her was a great staying, longer than most of them manage in my shade, and the whole while she was somewhere else, in the light, being watched by nobody who could smell the rain coming.
When the light went dark she looked around as though waking. She saw the moss. She touched my bark, once, the way none of them do anymore.
Then she rose and hurried off toward wherever the small ones hurry, and the mayflies she had thanked were already gone, and I stood in the ordinary evening, holding the shape of where she had leaned, which I will hold long after she has forgotten this ground, and me, and her thousand.