He pulled a mandarin from his jacket pocket—sweet, tight-skinned, at its absolute peak. As he peeled it, the bright oil misted his fingers, and for the first time in seven months, he smiled. Not because the grief was gone, but because it had finally stopped fighting the season.
But autumn is the season of letting go . The gums were already shedding bark in long, fibrous ribbons. Fungi—lemon-yellow and ghost-white—had erupted overnight on the damp sides of fallen logs. The air smelled of leaf litter and loam, of things breaking down to feed what came next. season australia now
Southern Highlands, New South Wales
For a long while, he just listened. Not to silence, but to autumn’s specific frequency: the rustle of a lyrebird scratching in the undergrowth, the distant plink of a single drop from last night’s rain, the whisper of wind through stringybark. It wasn’t the mournful quiet of winter or the frantic buzz of spring. It was a resting quiet. He pulled a mandarin from his jacket pocket—sweet,
