Unfurling Bark

Brian had been watching the branch for what felt like an age. It was a sturdy limb on an otherwise healthy oak, yet it drooped, a handful of shrivelled, brown leaves clinging to it with a desperation that felt almost theatrical. He squinted, trying to discern the exact point where its life had been cut short. A fungus? A break in the bark, unseen from below? The city park, usually bustling with joggers and the bright shrieks of children, was quiet today, caught in that particular late-autumn hush that felt like a held breath.

He heard the crunch of gravel and shifted on the bench, not wanting to seem too engrossed. A woman settled at the far end, her dark coat pulled tight, a worn sketchbook resting on her lap. She had a strong profile, hair pulled back severely, and she wore thin, wire-rimmed spectacles that caught the dull light. He figured she was around his age, mid-thirties maybe. She didn't look at him, instead, her gaze seemed fixed on a distant, skeletal willow.

"That branch," he said, surprising himself. His voice, a little rusty from disuse, sounded loud in the quiet.

She turned slowly, her expression unreadable. "The oak?" Her voice was low, slightly husky, like she hadn't used it much today either. She had a small, almost imperceptible scar above her left eyebrow.

"Yeah. Looks like it's giving up. The rest of the tree looks fine, though. See?" He gestured vaguely.

She followed his gaze. "Fungus, probably. Or just old age, taking its toll on the weakest part first." She paused. "Or maybe it's just decided it's had enough of all this." Her lip twitched, not quite a smile. There was something in her eyes, a kind of weary amusement that he found both intriguing and unsettling.

"Had enough of what? Being a tree?" He tried for a light tone, but it felt thin, like stretched canvas.

"Of being part of the whole. Of being connected. The system's breaking down, branch by branch, isn't it?" She didn't wait for an answer, instead, she ran a thumb over the cover of her sketchbook. The leather was soft, almost buttery. A tiny knot of anxiety tightened in Brian's chest. This was not the direction he'd anticipated.

"That's... a bit dramatic for a tree branch, don't you think?" He watched a gust of wind lift a spiral of leaves, sending them skittering across the path like nervous small animals. The chill bit at his ears.

"Is it?" Simone finally looked at him properly, her eyes, a deep shade of brown, held a directness that made him feel a little exposed. "Or is it just a microcosm? Everything's connected, right? A tree in a park in Winnipeg. A community. A country. You can see the rot, if you look close enough. Starts small, then..." She shrugged, a dismissive, almost cynical gesture.

"I work with structures," Brian said, feeling a need to ground the conversation, to pull it back to something tangible. "Buildings. You see a crack, you fix it. You reinforce it. You don't just... assume the whole thing is coming down." He picked at a loose thread on his scarf, a habit he hadn't noticed he still had.

"And do you? Fix it? Or do you just patch over the symptoms while the foundations crumble?" She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping, as if sharing a conspiratorial secret, though her expression remained aloof. "People build walls, don't they? Metaphorical ones. And they stop listening. Then they stop seeing the cracks in anyone else's walls." The scar above her eyebrow seemed more prominent now.

He sighed, a puff of visible breath in the cool air. "It's not that simple, surely. People just... have different ideas. Stronger opinions, maybe, than they used to." He thought of his own family dinners, the carefully navigated silences, the quick changes of subject when a particular news item came up. His niece, bless her, once shouted, 'Why can't anyone just agree?' before being shushed by her mother.

"'Different ideas' is a polite way of saying 'entrenched positions from which no one will budge an inch,' wouldn't you say?" Simone countered, her voice dry. "It's a competition of grievances now. Who's more offended? Who's been wronged the most?" She looked out at the empty spaces of the park. "It feels... brittle, doesn't it?" A small, shrivelled leaf, identical to those on the dying branch, landed silently on her sketchbook.

Brian watched it. "I suppose it does. But then, it's always been like that, to some extent. Humans, we're tribal. We find our groups, we defend them. It's evolutionary." He tried to sound academic, distant from the messiness, as if he were just an observer of human nature, not part of it.

"And has 'evolutionary' ever been an excuse for 'good'?" She turned the leaf over with a gloved finger. "We had a chance, I think. Post-internet. To connect, to understand. Instead, we just found louder megaphones for our biases. Amplified every division until the centre just... vanished." She looked at him again, a question in her steady gaze. "Do you feel it? That missing centre?" A jay screeched somewhere in the distance, a harsh, interrupting sound.

He did. He felt it every time he scrolled through a news feed, every time he heard a radio pundit shriek. He felt it in the way friendships had subtly shifted, becoming less forgiving, more wary. "I think," Brian began, hesitating, searching for the right words. "I think people are tired. Tired of fighting, tired of being told they're wrong, tired of trying to understand. It's easier to just... retreat. To your own side." He felt a familiar weariness settle over him, heavy and cold as the autumn air. A subtle tremor ran through his right leg, a nervous tic.

The Unspoken Divide

Simone nodded slowly, a slight tilt of her head. "And who profits from that exhaustion? From that retreat? Not us, certainly. We just get colder, more isolated. And the gaps between us become canyons." She picked at a loose thread on her own glove, then looked up sharply. "Or maybe I'm just a cynic. Is that it? You think I'm just seeing the worst in things?"

"I think you're seeing... a perspective," Brian replied carefully, choosing his words. "A valid one. But maybe not the only one. There are still people trying. Still bridges being built, even if they're small, and slow. You know? Grassroots stuff. Community projects. People still care about their neighbours, even if they vote differently." He thought of the food bank drive his apartment building organised last week, how different people, with clearly different ideologies, had still shown up, stacked cans, laughed over stale coffee.

"Are they? Or are they just building their own echo chambers, but with a bit more charitable window dressing?" She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly. "How many times do you actually, truly, talk to someone who fundamentally disagrees with you? About something that matters, I mean. Not just the weather, or a dying branch. Something that requires you to actually challenge your own assumptions?" She watched him, waiting.

The question hung in the air, cold and sharp. He thought of his colleagues, his friends, his family. He mostly gravitated towards people who saw the world broadly as he did. The few times he'd ventured into truly opposing viewpoints, online or in person, it had almost always ended badly. A slammed door, a furious email, a friendship quietly allowed to wither. It was easier to avoid. Safer. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling the coarse wool of his scarf against his skin. A faint odour of something burning drifted on the breeze, perhaps someone's autumn bonfire.

"It's hard," he admitted, the words feeling small and inadequate. "It's emotionally taxing. People don't want to feel attacked." He saw a faint sheen of sweat on his palms, despite the cold. His knees knocked together briefly beneath his trousers.

"So, we retreat. Into our corners. And we point fingers. And then we wonder why the branch is dying, why the tree is sick." She finally opened her sketchbook, her movements precise, almost surgical. Her hand, long and slender, hovered over a blank page. "It's not just policy, you know. Or politics. It's the way we treat each other. The instantaneous judgement. The assumption of malice where there might just be ignorance. The refusal to even entertain the possibility that the other side might have a point, even a tiny one." She drew a sharp, clean line down the centre of the page.

Brian watched her. He felt a strange tension building, a mixture of frustration and a reluctant fascination. She wasn't wrong, not entirely. He recognised the pattern. He'd participated in it, even if passively. His own quick dismissals of certain viewpoints, his internal eye-rolls. It was easier to label, to categorise, than to genuinely engage. He pictured the city, a map of Winnipeg, overlaid with invisible lines, fences, and fortified towers, each housing its own righteous few. A homeless man shuffled past them, pushing a rattling shopping trolley, and neither Brian nor Simone broke their intense eye contact, but the sound of the trolley's squeaky wheel added another layer to the city's quiet hum.

"What's the answer then?" Brian asked, his voice softer, almost a plea. He leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees. He noticed a small coffee stain on his jacket cuff, a memory of hurried morning.

Simone looked at the line she had drawn. "I don't know," she said, her voice unexpectedly quiet, devoid of its previous edge. "Maybe there isn't one. Maybe we just watch it all come down, bit by bit." She looked up, her gaze meeting his, and for a fleeting moment, he saw something else there: not just cynicism, but a profound, almost desperate sadness. It was the crack in her own wall. He saw the smallest tremor in her hand as she held the pencil. A tiny red robin landed on the bench between them, then startled, flew off into a thorny bush.

He wanted to say something, anything, to bridge that moment, that shared vulnerability. To offer a different perspective, a hope. But the words wouldn't come. His mind, usually so adept at finding architectural solutions, felt utterly blank, choked with the enormity of what she was describing. He noticed the faint scent of charcoal rising from her open sketchbook. The robin had chirped once from the bush, then was silent.

Simone gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of her head. She shifted on the bench, pulling her coat even tighter, as if to ward off a deeper cold. Then, without another word, without even a glance, she snapped her sketchbook shut, the sound sharp and final in the still air, and pushed herself to her feet. She started to walk away, a brisk, determined pace that suggested she was leaving more than just a bench behind. Brian watched her go, a strange mix of agitation and longing stirring within him. Had he just let the only person who understood him, even in disagreement, walk out of his life without even trying to hold onto the thread? What if her sadness wasn't just about the world, but about the very conversation they had just shared? He felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to call out to her, to ask her name, to simply… understand. But the words caught in his throat, and she was already disappearing around the bend in the path, leaving him alone with the dying branch and the profound, unsettling silence she had left in her wake. He felt a sharp, unexpected pain in his chest, not physical, but an ache that lingered, demanding attention, just like the unresolved tension in the air.

And then, from just beyond the bend, he heard a sound. Not her voice, but something else, something he couldn't quite place, a low, guttural murmur that sent a shiver down his spine, a sound that seemed to pull her further into the deepening shadows of the park, and he realised, with a sickening lurch, that he had no idea what she was walking into.