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The autumn winds brought with it a staggering level of orange, red, and yellow to the skies and the canopies of the local forests, setting it alight with the fires of fall, the beginning of a new year in certain cultures. They laid down on the floor, still and sleeping like the dreaming dead, gradually decaying into darker oranges, reds, yellows. Then, soon enough, it would turn into varying shades of brown, where the various decompositional processes on the ground of the forest would further decay it into detritus, compost, crushing it into the dirt, a nutritious feast for both plants and insects alike. A small caterpillar sitting on the edge of a strangely green leaf gnawed quietly on its meal, boring a circular hole into the edge, only to be shaken loose as its leaf was plucked up by a titanic figure of unfathomable mass and size. "Look, Dirk! It's a desk!"
"What." Dirk said, his boots crunching through dead leaves beneath him, staring at the oddly shaped green leaf in Jake's hand with an eyebrow raised as high as he could possibly get it. "No, Jake, that's a leaf."
"No, Dirk, it's a desk! You know, like in Animal Crossing, the furniture is all leaves?" Jake asked, nudging the leaf into Dirk's hands, chuckling. "Eh? Eh?"
Dirk picked up the leaf, examining it quietly, and then bent down to place it back where it was. Almost immediately, the somewhat frazzled caterpillar climbed back on from its place in the leaf pile and began chewing again, only slightly distressed by the sudden appearance of two strange giants. Soon it would be a cocoon, and none of this would matter anymore. "Did you know, in Japanese mythology--"
"Oh, bother..." Jake mumbled, as Dirk walked on ahead of him, continuing to talk about Japanese mythology regardless of how many sighs or quiet groans of annoyance Jake would let out.
"--The Tanuki, which, as I'm sure you're aware, is the animal Tom Nook is based off of - Tom Nook, Tanuki, geddit? - had the ability to transform leaves into fake currency, much like a leprechaun would regale you with fake gold that would go away when you tried to use it. So, in adapting the mythology to the modern video game, Nintendo simply added to the implication that Tom Nook, hypercapitalist pig that he is, can create currency from leaves and instead expanded it to the ability to create furniture from leaves. Hence, why all the desk are leaves, Jake. That's why they're leaves. Did you know that?" Dirk asked, turning his head so violently and quickly towards Jake that his entire neck popped at once.
"Jiminy Cricket!" Jake yelped, jumping up as Dirk's neck cracked, landing back on the ground with as much dignity as he could try to recapture from the moment. It was not a very large amount of dignity. "I told you to stop doing that with your neck, there's absolutely no way in heaven nor hell that that can be healthy for you."
""That that"? Come on, now, Jake, I know English, ironically enough, is a very messy language, but there's no need to perform such a grammatical massacre upon my ears during casual conversation. Surely you can do better." Dirk replied, whipping his neck back forward and then the other direction just so he could get a second crack out of it. Jake winced quietly.
"Okay, Madam Crocker, I'll watch my grammar next time, since you're so gosh-damned insistent upon it." Jake groaned, rolling his eyes.
"Thank you. I am now going to go home and bake sixty thousand cupcakes and be very nice to all my friends, because that is what I do with my life as Jane Crocker." Dirk snipped back, stepping over a rotting log with a tiny little hop. "Anyway, no. It feels nice and I am not going to stop even if it is bad for me. But I don't think it is, since it's just air bubbles popping out due to cavitation."
"You're just a real bundle of trivia today, aren't you?" Jake challenged, laughing quietly under his breath.
"When am I ever not?" Dirk replied, stopping at the edge of a gentle slope downwards. "Now, we have two options. Either we can go grab that log like thirty feet back and put it over this creek so I don't get my boots wet, or--"
Immediately, Dirk was interrupted by Jake charging into the flowing, ankle-level creek, bending down, and scooping some water in between his hands. Dirk, who was very fast, and had great reaction time, somehow did not see the revenge coming. Creek water, aimed directly at his face, splattering off his sunglasses. "Touche."
"Come on, Dirky boy ol' buddy ol' pal! Where's your sense of adventure?" Jake said as his definitive answer, bending down and splashing another spray of water onto Dirk's shirt. Sighing, Dirk bent down and charged into the water.