“Aye would ya lookit!!” marveled Crawley as he, Bram, and Hem traversed their way through the Deeps.

“Aye, never seen ‘em like this closer to town,” replied Hem. They were all treestruck. The leaves above them were flashing in gradients of yellow, orange, brown, red, a fiery concoction of Autumn’s pyrotechnics.

“What’s that word mean, hey?” Bram asked. The narrator forgot the word pyrotechnics was a bit of an anachronism for these young fellas. Nobody in Assol would like as not get a fair understandin’ of such a word in the same breath as someone else sayin’ it. We’re rollin’ right along anyway and we all have to keep up. We all know what we meant there. Fires! The trees looked like fires!!

“Ain’t sure what you’re speakin’ of at any rate so let’s keep it moving please,” said Crawley. Crawley’s childhood illness (from which he had recovered) had left him with a marked change when it came to losing patience, but he could pick up more details and appreciated the imagination more. Tradeoffs? “Looks like nobody in town’d believe us if we told ‘em how colored up these trees are!!”

“Oh they’d believe we shot off into the Deeps right enough,” answered Hem, “so no loud talkin’ bout this!” The Deeps of Fleep Fleep Forest were off limits, but nobody would say why.

They’d been a-hikin’ fer the last two hours, say, eatin’ their hike snacks and if they turned ‘round now they’d’ve counted it among their successes given the red-gold leaves. Hem looked up from beneath the foliage and glimpsed the afternoon sun beamin’ on through, sparklin’ like the River Fairies in the Ravin’ River in springtime. Silver-red it was, the light comin’ through and makin’ everything seem like an underwater aquarium of some sort. Looked nice. This was the sort of feeling that gave Blom them memories of his earlier times, afore he got sent on off to the South O’ Things for work and career.

Not too confident about this scene because it ain’t goin’ anywhere some place specific as if to move the plot along you understand, but these scenes are nice Autumn sketches.

Hem took a deep breath and the smells of the wet Autumn seeped into his senses, sending clashing oranges and browns into his mind like the majestic patterns of a Wayward Spirit (not that he knew about such things, or even had a remote sorta interest in ‘em, but common folk had a certain sense, as it were). Even the Autumn Storms Hem had taken a liking to, in spite of them roarin’ across the country and sowin’ the seeds of discord.

He felt a melancholy descend on him like a thin veil of gray, almost as if he caught a glimpse of hisself at twice his age when these two fellas were a hundred leagues away and no longer his friends.