“Why do you have—” Dex dropped it. “Tell you what. There’s a fruit stand on the way there, and they usually have cherry wine. A couple bottles of that would be a nice gift.”
“Oh, good,” Mosscap said. It ceased its rummaging and walked more confidently along. “I will trade some pebs for cherry wine and give it to my hosts. Ha!”
“Why is that funny?” Dex asked.
“Because it’s so very human, and I am not. And it’s not funny, it’s delightful. It’s the same as knowing how to calm a wolf by rolling over, or how to make sun jays identify themselves.”
Dex blinked. “How to do what?”
“Every sun jay has an identifying call,” Mosscap explained patiently. “A name, if you like. There’s a sound they make that instructs any other sun jays in the area to sound off and let them know who’s in the neighborhood.”
“And you know how to do that?”
Mosscap beamed. “Let’s see if there’s anyone around.” It opened its mouth and let out an uncanny imitation of a raspy corvid croak, loud enough to echo through the branches above. A silence followed, and then, from not too far away, an answering squawk called back, followed by another more distant, yet unmistakably distinct.
“Whoa,” Dex said. They laughed. “That’s really cool.”
Mosscap gave a nod of agreement. It turned its gaze toward the trees, presumably searching for the individuals it had been speaking with, but something else caught its eye. “Oh, that’s lovely,” Mosscap said.
“What is?” said Dex.
Mosscap pointed. “Crown shyness is so striking, don’t you think?”
Dex had no idea what Mosscap meant. “Sorry, what’s striking?”
“Stop,” Mosscap said. “Look.”
Dex sighed, but they hit the brakes, put their feet on the paving below, and looked up.
Mosscap continued to point, tracing lines in the air. “Look at the treetops,” it said. “What do you notice?”
“Uh,” Dex said. They frowned, not knowing what Mosscap was getting at. There were branches, obviously, and leaves, and … “Oh. Oh, they’re…” They fell quiet as their perspective of the surrounding landscape shifted in a way they’d never unsee.
Despite their number and close proximity, none of the treetops were touching one another. It was as though someone had taken an eraser and run it cleanly through the canopy, transforming each tree into its own small island contained within a definitive border of blue sky. The effect reminded Dex of puzzle pieces laid out on the table, each in their own place yet still unconnected. It wasn’t that the trees were unhealthy or their foliage sparse. On the contrary, every tree was lush and full, bursting with green life. Yet somehow, in the absence of contact, they knew exactly where to stop growing outward so that they might give their neighbors space to thrive.
“How…” Dex began to ask.
“No one knows,” Mosscap said. “At least, not to my knowledge. Some say it’s to minimize competition. Others think it’s to prevent the spread of disease. But as to how the trees know when to hold themselves back, I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”
Dex gave an inward nod to Samafar as they continued to observe the strange phenomenon. “I’ve never noticed it before,” they said, and this bothered them. They’d grown up around there. They’d ridden this road dozens of times. The pattern of the trees was spectacularly obvious, now that they were observing it, but it had always been the backdrop to Dex. The wallpaper. They’d never been looking for it. Now they couldn’t see anything else.
“I’m surprised you weren’t familiar with crown shyness,” Mosscap said. “You’re so knowledgeable about plants.”
“I know herbs and ornamentals,” Dex said. “I don’t really know trees, just some of their names.”
“Well, that’s the nice thing about trees.” Mosscap put its hands on its hips as it looked around. “They’re not going anywhere. You can take all the time you need to get to know them.”
* * *
It was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed?
Yet at the same time, in complete contradiction, seeing that said place had changed in your absence was nothing if not surreal. Dex felt this as they approached the road leading to their family’s farm, just as they felt every time they made the trip. The road was the same, but the fence had been mended. The field was the same, but the greyberry bushes had been cut down to the root. The farm was a place where Dex knew they would always be welcome but never in the same way as before they left; a place they knew intimately and no longer knew at all.