golden hour // autumn [day one]

[dars]

AUTUMN ;

The sun was getting lower in the sky by the time we actually made it to the stream, but it was still bright enough for me to notice some strange things. Like how even though the stream looked like it was made of runoff from all the ponds, there were no lily pads, or any of the orange and white fish. The water was clear and fast-moving, but not enough to become a white rapid like the one Daddy took Austin canoeing in on their fishing trips.

It looked like the bottom was made of rock, which I reckoned made sense, due to the stream wrapping itself around the base of the mountain.

"I bet you it's opened up all kinds of caverns and stuff below ground," I wagered, because it probably had. But probably in a place like this, that wasn't a good thing. In fact, I reckoned there was probably some terrifying never-before-seen critters living there, angry to have been awoken by our interference. Nature bites back harder every time- how sad that humanity was such a circular concept that none of us could ever do anything about it. Curiosity created curiosity created curiosity. We had no answers and were willing to look in continuously unlikely places for them as time went on. But all it meant was destroying more and never getting the answers anyway.

So, it might've been plain dumb of me to do, but I knelt down and dipped my fingers into the surface.

"It's warm," I said. Nothing swam up and ate off my hand, so I guessed it was at least safe enough for me to quickly fill up my canteen briskly before I stood and began to put some distance between myself and the quiet trinkling of the water.

The sun bathed everything in golden light, and though it had nothing on the pastures of Ten during the harvest moon, I knew this place was undeniably beautiful. It would be dark soon, though, and I bet my bottom dollar that this place was going to be a lot more dangerous than the pastures. I wanted to be somewhere safe and hidden by then, if at all possible.

[autumn collects things]