The dusk air is dead still. That silence where the leaves wait in absolute inertia, where the air is so thick you can feel yourself moving through it. Even the usual valley noises sound flat, deadened, muted. I am waiting. We are all waiting. The anticipation is almost oppressive. There is not even a hint of breeze. The branches of birch and willow hang dead weight in the fading light. There is a magick in the air that I can’t name, can’t define, but I can almost taste it.

I move slowly, lightly, tiptoe on the few fallen leaves that hint of autumn hiding just around the corner. I breathe quietly, eyes adjusting as darkness sweeps a blanket over the land. A bat flits silently above and I can almost see the trail it leaves in the air. I breathe the stillness deep into my lungs, the taste of night, damp, woody, dark, filling. The sweetness of summer tinged with the bark-notes of early autumn, tangy over my tongue. And still we wait.

I close the door, softly, softly. Inky blackness closes over the window panes, interspersed with familiar lights twinkling from the opposite valley side. Even inside, there is stillness. The fridge hums, low and constant. Outside, the air wraps itself around the stone walls, around flowers glowing in the darkness, around moths, around feathered night hunters perched in high branches, awaiting any small movement in the grasses below. We still. For what, I am unsure. But under my feet, deep in that place where knowing is absolute yet touch is impossible, I feel the silent arrival of something new. A new season, a fading of high summer, smudging together, passing a pin-point and tipping ever forwards. The dawn brings a new breath.