A Script for A Season of Dissolution

The river always felt like a pulse. But today, it was a rapid, uneven beat, too fast, too insistent, dragging at the banks with a patience that felt more like a threat. My boots, heavy with the loam, sunk a little with each step, the squelch a counterpoint to the rush of the water. Spring had taken hold, yes, but not in the way I remembered it. Not with the gentle, hesitant unfurling that used to define these woods. This year, it was a sudden, almost aggressive burst, as if the forest was forcing itself awake, tearing through the last vestiges of winter with a strained vigour.

Every new bud on the birches lining the path seemed too brightly emerald, a shade of green that felt less organic and more like a fresh coat of paint. The air, usually crisp and clean after the rain, hung heavy, humid, carrying a scent that wasn't quite ozone, not quite petrichor, but something vaguely metallic, like old pennies left out in the damp. I kept my gaze fixed on the river, on the churning surface that offered a constant, distracting motion. Better to watch the water than to let my eyes linger too long on the unnatural stillness of the deeper woods, where shadows pooled like spilled ink even in the midday light.

My mind kept snagging on the idea of a seam, a faint line where two disparate things had been joined, but imperfectly. The new leaves, the way they unfurled, they didn't seem to grow *from* the branches so much as appear *on* them, fully formed, almost pasted. The whole forest felt like a hastily reassembled garment, its stitches still visible if you looked close enough. I ran a hand over the rough bark of an old maple, feeling the lichen, the dampness that never quite dried. It was a familiar texture, a touchstone against the creeping sense of unreality.

The river, meanwhile, offered its own strange narratives. It carried debris – not just fallen branches and last year's desiccated leaves, but stranger things. A single, perfectly preserved robin's egg, pale blue and uncracked, tumbled past me as if deliberately put on display. Further along, a tangle of roots, stripped bare and bleached, resembled a skeletal hand reaching out from the currents, its digits splayed in a silent plea. I watched it for a long moment, a knot forming in my stomach. The river, the great purifier, seemed to be offering up its secrets, or perhaps, its aberrations.

Undercurrents of Stone

I stopped at a small inlet, where the current slowed enough for a thin layer of foam to gather against the bank. Small, smooth stones lay half-submerged, their surfaces polished by the relentless water. I knelt, my knees sinking into the soft, muddy earth, and reached for one. It was larger than my palm, perfectly ovoid, and felt impossibly smooth, cool to the touch. Not just river-worn smooth, but unnaturally so, as if it had been tumbled for centuries, or perhaps, for moments, by a force that didn't adhere to the usual rules of erosion. Its colour was a uniform, deep grey, utterly devoid of any fleck or vein, like a solid piece of forgotten time.

I turned it over and over in my hand, its weight reassuringly solid, yet its texture profoundly unsettling. It felt ancient, but also utterly new, as if it had just been manufactured. I’d seen stones like this before, but never one so utterly blank. It hummed, faintly, against my palm, a vibration I felt more in my bones than in my skin. A trick of the blood, I told myself, a phantom echo of the rushing river. But I held it tighter, this impossible grey egg, this smooth anomaly. It felt like a decision, a silent, weighty choice presented to me by the current.

A twig snapped behind me. I spun around, the stone still clutched in my hand, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Nothing. Only the usual sway of the young birches, the filtered light casting dancing patterns on the leaf litter. My imagination, always too keen in these woods, especially now. The feeling of being watched was a constant companion these days, a dull ache behind my eyes that sharpened when I paused. It wasn't hostile, not precisely, but a passive, all-encompassing observation, like the forest itself was slowly turning its attention to me.

I tucked the stone into my pocket, its alien smoothness pressing against my thigh through the denim. A small, irrational comfort. I continued along the river path, each step a deliberate push against the resistance of the heavy air. The ground grew softer here, a spongy carpet of moss and old pine needles. The trees began to close in, their branches weaving a tighter net above, allowing only slivers of the spring sunlight to penetrate. The green here was deeper, older, a shadowy hue that absorbed light rather than reflecting it.

Where the Bark Breathes

Further on, where the path narrowed to little more than a deer trail, I saw it. An old oak, ancient even by the standards of this venerable forest, its trunk thick and gnarled, its branches like arthritic fingers reaching into the gloom. But it wasn't just its age that drew my eye. The bark, usually a rigid, fissured armour, seemed to ripple, subtly, almost imperceptibly, as if the tree itself was slowly breathing. A slow, deep inhalation, then an even slower exhalation, the rough texture of the trunk expanding and contracting by a fraction of a millimetre. It was a visual distortion, I told myself, a trick of the dappled light, the moisture on the bark. But my eyes insisted otherwise.

I crept closer, my movements careful, almost reverent. The air around the tree was still, thick, almost viscous, holding a scent of damp earth and something sweet, cloying, like overripe fruit left too long in the sun. As I approached, the subtle movement of the bark seemed to intensify, the rhythms growing more pronounced. I could almost hear a faint, deep thrumming, vibrating up through the soles of my boots. It wasn't the sound of insects, nor the wind. It was something internal, geological, as if the earth's own slow pulse was manifesting through this ancient wood.

I reached out a hesitant hand, my fingers hovering just inches from the living, breathing bark. The temptation to touch it was overwhelming, a primal urge to confirm or deny what my senses were screaming. My mind raced, trying to find a rational explanation. Subterranean water flow? Some obscure fungal growth? But none of it fit the sheer, undeniable *aliveness* of the motion. It wasn't a tremble, it was a deliberate, organic expansion and contraction.

A flicker, then. The world around me seemed to shift, like a badly edited film reel. The light softened, the greens deepened, and for a fleeting instant, the air turned cold, the scent of pine more dominant than the cloying sweetness. I saw, not the spring, but a glimpse of autumn, the leaves on the breathing oak a deep russet, the river below a sheet of polished obsidian. Then, just as quickly, it snapped back. The vibrant, unsettling green of spring. The humid, metallic air. The rhythmic, subtle swell of the bark.

My breath caught in my throat. I stumbled back, nearly tripping over a raised root, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. Temporal slippage. It wasn't a new concept, not here, not in these woods, but it had always been a whisper, a rumour, never a visceral experience. To feel the season itself lurch and correct, like a misstep in time, was a different order of disturbance altogether. I stared at the tree, my mind trying to reconcile what I'd just witnessed with the solid, unchanging reality I usually clung to.

The tree continued its slow, silent respiration, utterly indifferent to my sudden panic. It was a natural part of its existence, perhaps, a process as mundane to it as the rising sun. But to me, it was a profound unraveling. The world wasn't just subtly wrong; it was actively, briefly, coming undone. I backed away slowly, my eyes never leaving the breathing bark, until the density of the surrounding foliage obscured it once more.

The Unstitched World

The rest of the walk was a blur of heightened awareness. Every rustle of leaves was a clandestine conversation, every glint of water a hidden eye. The vibrant green of the new growth, which had at first seemed unsettlingly bright, now appeared fragile, almost brittle, as if it could tear away at any moment, revealing the bare, skeletal structure beneath. I started to notice how some of the younger saplings seemed to twist at odd angles, their trunks curving sharply where they should have grown straight, as if forced into peculiar contortions by an invisible hand.

It wasn't just the forest; it was the entire atmosphere. The birdsong, usually a riotous chorus in spring, was subdued, fragmented, like an orchestra playing out of sync. The drone of insects, too, felt off – a low, persistent hum that never quite resolved into a specific buzz or chirp, a frequency that seemed to vibrate in my teeth. I felt like I was walking through a painting where the colours were bleeding, the lines blurring, the canvas itself threatening to fray apart.

I came to a clearing, a small patch of grass where the river widened and meandered. Here, the sun managed to break through, washing the scene in a brilliant, almost blinding light. For a moment, the strange sensations subsided, replaced by the familiar warmth on my skin, the scent of wet earth. I closed my eyes, trying to recentre myself, to shake off the oppressive weight of the uncanny. But when I opened them again, the peace was gone. A single, enormous dandelion, its head a perfect, golden orb, stood impossibly tall in the centre of the clearing, its stem thick as my thumb, its petals radiating an almost aggressive intensity.

It was just a dandelion, I reasoned. An unusually large, vibrant one. But against the backdrop of the breathing tree and the shifting seasons, it felt like an anomaly, a deliberate statement from the forest itself. A banner of the unnatural spring, proclaiming its unsettling arrival. I felt a cold dread begin to seep into my bones, a realisation that the subtle wrongness wasn't just in my perception, but in the very fabric of this place.

I reached the old footbridge, its wooden planks damp and slick with moss. It marked the unofficial end of my usual loop. Across the river, the forest continued, a denser, darker mass of trees that I rarely ventured into alone. It looked different today, less inviting, more like a wall. A wall that was subtly, almost imperceptibly, shifting, its greens too deep, its shadows too opaque. The path ahead, the one I usually took back to the edge of the woods, seemed to stretch out, longer, less defined than it had been an hour ago.

The grey stone in my pocket felt heavy, a cold, smooth weight against my hip. I took it out again, turning it over in my palm. The uniform grey stared back, a mirror to nothing. I wondered if it was a piece of this unstitched world, a fragment that had escaped the general reassembly. Or perhaps, a keystone, holding a tiny piece of something solid, something real, in this dissolving landscape. The river rushed beneath the bridge, its sound a constant, unyielding presence, indifferent to the subtle unraveling unfolding on its banks. The thought of home, of the familiar, solid walls of my small cottage, felt impossibly distant, a memory from another season, another world entirely. The air grew cooler, the light began to fade, but the vibrant, aggressive green of the spring leaves seemed to glow with an inner, unsettling light of their own.

I stood there, listening to the river, the muted, disconnected birdsong, and the low, insistent hum that now seemed to emanate from the very ground beneath my feet. The forest was settling into night, but it wasn't the comfortable, familiar settling I knew. It was a tightening, a gathering of its strange, newly woven self, pulling the edges taut, making the stitches less visible, but no less present. The grey stone felt colder now, a small, still point in a world that refused to stay put. The feeling of being watched intensified, not just from the trees, but from the river itself, from the very air, an ancient, patient gaze that saw everything, knew everything, and found nothing amiss in the deep, unsettling beauty of this surreal, unravelling spring.