They sat in the garden, at walkway end upon bench under cradle-canopy of trees in change from green to gold, the latter emboldened in glow of sunlight through thin-fleshed translucence of the leaves that shone in dazzle at upward gaze and as shadow and light over walkway looking down.
“I’ve gone back to reading old stories again,” he spoke, “searching for a feeling they once gave.”
“Is the feeling still there?” she asked.
“I haven’t found or felt it yet.”
“Maybe you’re searching and putting effort in the wrong place,” she shared.
“Where should I look?”
“In you,” she answered plain, simply, countenance both warm and cool like autumn air and resting place under shadow and sun. “Why do you keep looking outward for what you already know within? It’s not a stimulus you’re after, it’s a condition in being. Stop seeking out in fictions: become and be,” she spoke.
She took his hand into hers. Her hand in hold was both cool and warm, like sky: cool in surface flesh and first-felt touch then warming from depth that rose and sensed the longer it stayed upon.
They stared together upward onto autumn’s change, translucence of the sun through soft-stirred leaves, the few that fell and scratched on stray over bricked face of the garden lane, eyes carrying from the sun to fallen leaves in slow-swept course and rest into colored foliage of walkway’s frame, final-season splendor before frost’s dimming of verdure.
With thumb, she traced light and faint the lifelines of his palm, its path and curve and many branches; so much written, still yet to be lived, found, learned, and experienced—waiting story in the flesh.
“Stop looking back to what’s lived and told,” she spoke. “There’s more to find and live and learn—to write—and if you seek the feeling still from story, make it in one that’s yours.”
Wind stirred speaking through light and leaves and catching the hold of her backdrawn hair—drawn and blown in breath same as foliage and canopy above, dazzling too in wind-dance and light—and in wind and words through autumn’s gold, gone was the cool as warmth of sun and holding hand remained.