With a light heart, I plunged into the over-arching vault of leaf. It was not what I had expected. Coils of vaporous mist enwrapped the shaggy heads of the oak trees. They writhed around them like a milky smoke, exquisite and over-whelming. Huge amounts of mist caressed the crusted bark. Adding its toxic gas to the damp breath of the forest, it glided with deadly intent. It deadened sound, haunted glades and poured into empty spaces. A daunting silence overhung the hallowed ground where the trees dared not grow. Nothing stirred, nothing shone, nothing sang. A hollow echoing, like the hushed tones of a great, slabbed cathedral, entombed the wood.
Then a finger of supernal light poked through the misty mesh. It was followed by a whole loom of light, filtering down in seams of gold. Like the luminal glow of the gods, it chased the shadows, banished the gloom and spilled into spaces where the mist once stalked. The fluty piping of a songbird split the silence just as the forest became flooded with light. A noise of trilling and warbling detonated all around me as the lonely forest came alive with the trees. I darted between shafts of lustrous-gold light as I went, admiring the butterflies. They pirouetted in the air, their wings a-whirr like little ripples of silk.
The glory of the forest was revealed in the birthstone-bright light. Almond-brown trees stood proudly, with a tender glow. Their bark looked like riffled toast and gems of amber clasped their crusty exterior. The first blush of the morn gave the leafy bower a green-going-to-gold complexion.
Tip-toeing past the suede like flowers, I caressed them softly, getting tingles in my fingers. My ears perked up at the metallic, tinkling sound of a stream. It flashed with a tinsel