A great, gnarled tree stood silhouetted in the growing autumn twilight, treetips softly kneading the stream of an evening breeze, even as they stemmed from a pillar as unwavering and composed as the gods. The trunk, larger at its base than ten solidly built men, rippled against the tapestry of dying light in knotted fists and rolling swells of sculpted time, so that it was not apparent that a barnacled slope, clustered in the crook of a rugged cradling arm, was only a guest in its embrace. The vagrant gradually pooled into a distinct set of swells as it separated itself, branching away from the steady firmament of earth's own cathedral arch. Like a tree spirit taking shape, head and shoulders solidified in the goblin light — when colors run and lines bleed as on wet canvas — so that the extremities seemed to remain conjoined to the tree, even as the second trunk resolved itself in miniature.
The onlooker, enraptured to bear witness to this supernatural scene, observed as the colors receded with the waning sun and the contrasts settled into a soft monochromatic collage that was momentarily more discernible in the gentler afterglow of the star's over-saturated kiss on the horizon. The tree-turned-tree spirit now appeared to her a ragged boy with shaggy hair, barely out of his tens, yet gazing down at her with eyes as old as his host and as tired as the ancients'.
Though hesitant to shatter the ethereal silence, she lifted her voice with the deference of one before an altar to inquire who he was and where he'd come from. Either in reticence or reply, he raised his head, eyes leaving hers to settle on the distant stars just beginning to assert themselves as the local star receded behind the veil of Earth. "Perhaps," she ventured, still unsteady in her own newfound adolescence, "you should come down from there and head on home." The whites of his eyes circled back to hers and seemed to consider - whether her person or proposition she could not tell.
The silence surrounded them as thoroughly as the river resumes the contours of the riverbed, and for a span of heartbeats the space seemed untethered from time. At last his small frame flexed against the billowing branch, hands coming to rest on his perch as his shoulders slouched forward into the posture of one preparing to jump. It was in the breadth of this small movement that the dying throws of light articulated the reedy ridges of rope wreathed about his neck. "Wait!" she commanded — but too late. The small figure had thrust itself forth from its precipice and sliced an inevitable arc through the air, falling to earth.
Reflexively she turned away, reluctant to decipher the soft "thud" that cut through the siren scream of her own racing heart. Turning back, she found a scarecrow of a boy stood before her, a head shorter but with eyes resolute. The noose about his neck resting abreast his collarbone as innocuous as a necklace, the business end hanging unfrayed and impotent at his back. "Did someone put that one you," she asked as the tempo of her pulse gradually recovered its customary rhythm, "or did you put it on yourself?"
The word returned so softly she was not sure it was heard so much as felt: "Yes."
Slowly she lifted her hand, reaching for his. As he did not recoil, their fingers connected - the back of his hand conforming to the curve of her encircling palm as neatly as it had blended to the crook of the tree. She compressed it in hers. It was as solid as the branch that had born it and as warm as her own. Gritty with the dust of the earth, it impressed an answering pressure. She thought something flickered in the hollow of his pool-black eyes, though it might have been just the sky reflected there.
The wind rose, rustling the grass and decay around them, and enshrouded within that timeless whisper came the strange words: "I found you," but she could not tell whether they originated from the woods or within.
