Chapter Text
The ancient heart of the forest holds only one leaf left. You stand with every other of your kind in the clearing around it, the grass littered with red, yellow, and green leaves. The trees enclosing the clearing are not yet bare, still an ephemeral tapestry of colour. The eyes of everyone watches the large tree as intensely as you do in anticipation for the hunt.
The second the leaf falls will mark the beginning of the mating season, as it has done for every generation before you. At times you lament how different your species is from others. Ones that engage in courting and careful selection of mates, a process of acceptance or denial. But that's not how your species works, there is socialization and casual courting but only in hopes that the woman will allow the man to catch her, but the hunt is the deciding factor. Even if you've been swayed to allow a certain male to take you and become your mate, if someone else catches you first, it doesn't matter.
Although you know you're clever enough to ensure your mate, you have not decided, with three suitors trying to sway you all year, you've had trouble picking one you'd prefer to catch you. So this season, you will do your damnedest to not get caught at all. You will not mate this season, as you have avoided every season before since you came of age.
The wind rustles through the forest, you hear it before you feel it as it encroaches. It caresses over your shoulders and through your hair as it passes like a wave towards the tree.
Three pairs of eyes burn into your back, as heavy as the sun on an forgiving summers day.
The leaf shudders, twirls as it disconnects from the branch, and chaos.
Go.