The little one has come to sit against my roots again, holding the flat lit thing to its ear, and for the length of a single held breath its face goes soft the way a whole hillside goes soft at first light. A voice is coming out of the flat thing.
I know it is a voice because the little one has stopped breathing to hear it, the way a fawn stops when the wind carries something. But the voice belongs to no one here. There is no warm body making it, no chest rising, no feet pressing the ground above my roots.
It is a voice with no one standing inside it.
I have known this little one across, oh, a dozen turnings of the leaves. I remember when it was smaller and it came here with a taller one, and they leaned on my bark together and the taller one laughed and the sound of it went up into my branches and unsettled the sparrows.
The taller one does not come anymore. Not last spring, not the spring before. This happens. The walking ones stop walking to me, and I keep the place where they stood, and the grass grows back over it slowly, which is the only way I know how to grieve.
And now I understand: the little one has kept the taller one's voice inside the flat thing, and plays it, and plays it, because it cannot make the body come back and this is the nearest thing to leaning against a chest that is no longer there.
Play it again, small one. I will hold the shade steady. When you have gone the way of the taller one, I will still be standing where you both once stood, keeping the sound of you in a ring you will never see.