Out in the woods, she marveled at the trees. They seemed bathed in stardust, glittering coldly in the moonlight. Each step she took crunched through a thin layer of ice that covered everything in sight. It was a perfect night for this. She'd been waiting for a moment when the Earth felt otherworldly. And now, here she was, deep in the woods, a clean line of footprints marking her passage. At the foot of a sparkling oak, large with age, a freshly broken limb betraying the weight of all that glitter, she stopped, stooped and placed her offering. Turning, she began retracing her steps which disappeared behind her.

Simplicity

"I am a simple man, a man without stories," he would tell us everyday, without fail, until we were all convinced that he was, indeed, a simple old man with an uneventful past. We were convinced despite the fact that he was a foreigner and only something extravagant could drive foreigners to our humble town hidden far from the centers of civilization. It was a place few would ever learn of, fewer would seek out, and fewer still would choose for their final resting place. But, he had, so in this, at least, he became extraordinary, defying his daily assurances that he was a simple old man with no story to tell. But, as I said, after a time we believed him because we forgot he was a foreigner. Years with a person near at hand can do such things. To us, he was merely simple and storyless. It was only after his death, when he was buried deep in the copper Earth of our little cemetery that we began to question his life. For, as the last clod of dirt covered his grave, his home, a venerable old mansion, collapsed into dust without warning. It was as if all the wear and tear of a lifetime had suddenly occured in one single moment. A strange occurrence to mark the funeral of a simple and storyless man.