The times they are a-changin'. A cool, dry draft has broken the ancient spell that would have subjected these late months to the wild fury of northeastern monsoons. The clouds still loom, but more often than not, they merely rumble by and fail to deliver even a token of thundery wrath.
The end of the decade arrived with damp splutter in both the forests as well as the flats that ring a line of forbidden reefs. Little stirred by the trails, as if the birds, bugs and beasts that should reveal at least a hint of their existence had been displaced by a season of doldrums and suffocating windbeats. Was this stillness a sign of foul tidings or merely a means by which the creatures of recovering woods wait out a cycle of ill air?
No reason or rhyme accounts for the sudden eruptions that seem intent on dispelling all traces of ennui with exuberant flurries of colour and a furious burst of activity. A low hill that at times appeared ragged and ruined has shed once brittle twigs for lush beds of green and gold.
Bloodless dogfights are waged over these founts of nectar by villains in the form of tigers, crows, sailors, lacewings and emigrants. Pansies, palmflies and judies decline to enter the fray, biding their time on perches that can be perilously close to the clutches of giant weavers. Hidden in the cool shade of dense bushes, bulbuls, prinias and flowerpeckers click, bubble and twit their encouragement to fragile wings that refuse to melt in the noonday sun.
The road below is mysteriously barred, but nothing stands in the way of those who stop by to swiftly savour the view and miss the real quarry of the scene. A bare trunk that once housed a family of starlings no longer rises far above the water. But the raffish trees that overlook the mine now cradle a growing colony of herons in the vermilion of courtship.
The grey spearers share their roost with an assembly of egrets, most of which are merely winter guests seeking a cool respite from the heat of a summer in love. Fringing the bank are tall grasses that conceal flocks of munias who stay sweet and low, for sparrowhawks and falcons patrol the middle reaches for little birds that aim too high, and far larger kites and eagles ride the midday draughts to vanish into cosmic invisibility.
It's impossible to stay still in this hive of multiple distractions. The day swung wide and offered few pauses to cut through a morass of questions that perhaps are better left unasked. An illusive noble interrupted the path of a nervous sunbeam, while a knight in rare colours accompanied the final leg of the walk. Not every moment was captured and all too often, a fleeting sense of regret was ignored and left to wander anew. For when life is on the rebound, it's only natural that every flutter of motion stirs up a storm of doubt and the fear that even old loves may well sink into quiet nights of ungroomed affection.
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