The Bracken Woods witiko wind, skeleton trees

Souvik hiked in silence. Naked trees flanked him at every turn and brown earth, stripped of verdant understory, sprawled away as far as the eye could see. The land spread before him, ravaged and abandoned. The matchstick woods felt haunted. Yet young Souvik followed the empty trail deeper and deeper into the territory, seemingly undeterred. He kept a clipped but casual pace, and his chin was up, his tail down. His ears twisted suspiciously, however, and his nose wriggled as he walked. He smelled little, and he heard no birdsong, no chitter of rodents. It was eerie. There was just the scent of kindling, and the sigh of the wind and the knocking of bare branches.

Even the burning sun brought no relief from the strangeness of this place. When it was not obscured by the intermittent clouds, it cast down hot, pitiless light on the trees and turned them into grave markers. Souvik felt like a ghoul as he picked his silent way between them. The deeper he went into the woods, the more the hair on his nape prickled. Eventually, not even the sun could drive the chill from his bones. Still, he moved on.

A thick bank of clouds had gathered by the time he finally stopped. They were bluish brown, and they boiled menacingly above the trees. They presented the first truly threatening sight all day, but after a glance, Souvik promptly forgot about them. He marked an old gray tree beside the path, then he walked past it into the eastern waste of untrodden timberland. He remained silent as he skirted rocks and thickets, and only when the path lay out of sight did Souvik stop again. Beneath a wide squat tree, he dug up a bit of earth and sank into it. The sun warmed his back. The emptiness lulled his senses. His eyes closed and he slept.

He dreamed the ghosts of the wood were watching him.