Redtail Rise Around me where I laid.

Fall, as Riley had come to find it, was summer’s last gasp - a Sunday before the cruelest season.

While one would think things slowed down around the changing season, Riley discovered it was the opposite. In near hysteria, the world buzzed. Bees threw the last of their energy into their housing. Squirrels gathered stores for winter in mindless panic. And the deer ate heavily, storing their winter larders on the fats of their back.

He drank from a creek that had grown quiet. Underneath the dark waterline, he stilled as he saw something stir.

Instinctively, he seized it. As he rose from the water a brilliant arc of sun drenched droplets cascaded around him; he made for the shore, sopping and burdened by the kicking, hissing thing in his mouth.

A box turtle — painted beautifully in the full splendor of fall. Riley set the thing upon the ground away from the water, amusing himself by knocking the thing about while it steadily tried to return to the creek line.