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The sun's fading beams threaded their way through the soft net of leaves and branches that formed the drooping crown of the willow tree, the resultant evening light dappling the waters below, splitting into myriad reflections off the surface.
A thousand lives began and ended gloriously here every day. Down here, at the wave's crest, where success, failure, and survival ebbed and flowed and pulsed, there was no time for frivolity, no space for sloth, every moment brought with it opportunity. And danger.
Above the sparkle of the sprinkling brook, a thinner, reedier sound broke the fragile evening. A humming, almost papery in tone.
Then a flash of lucent green.
And another. Then a third, breaking over the grassy banks of the stream before dipping down towards the water's edge. All three flashes now in triangular formation, just inches apart, speeding over the rippling surface. The lead flash faltered for a second, slowing and dipping dangerously close to the water, before rising up once more to rejoin the formation.
As the three points of light neared the willow, more verdant stabs of light, maybe seven in total, zipped out of the tree's overhanging net of foliage with a loud hzzzzzzzz, seemingly on a collision course with the approaching threesome, before starbursting in neat formation and forming a tight ring around the incoming triangle, escorting them on their onward journey inside the leafy curtain, passing through it as if water through air.
The humming lights diminished almost immediately once inside the canopy, leaving only the shimmering sounds of the stream to lull any startled observer back to sleep.