They stood in a neat semicircle in a clearing in the wood, itself extraordinary in that there had not been a clearing before, their unnatural patterns a miasma of colours which swirled and beckoned enigmatically. The aura they emanated was one which the boy found entirely foreign - alien enough, indeed, to have turned away all other life for miles.
But not him.
He approached the strange boxes, each of them as tall as his waist and just as wide: giant cubes which hummed as he approached, as though acknowledging his presence. The blue bird shivered in apprehension.
"These... do not belong in this forest, do they?"
The implication was obvious. The boy had known, and the animals had known, and the blue bird had known, but they had not comprehended before; passed it off as a passing suspicion; of lurking dreams half-fulfilled in the nighttime day that was the twilight of their memories.
"You brought them here," the voices seemed to say; to - falsely... or correctly? - accuse, "and only you can rid us of them."
The trees swayed, flurried a little now by a wind that did not exist; by the crowds who pressed in and shoved and rushed around in the fragility of their lives in another world.
"I... need time."
But his voice was weak in the pressing in of emotions and suspicions and understandings and the asphyxiating grip of life: a reality which he had always eluded, and which he knew now had caught up with him.
"Time was all you had."
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