Field Guide to the Haunted Forest (Haunted Forest Trilogy)

by Jarod K. Anderson

Home is a valley between saw-toothed peaks of loss.

You flinch at leaf shadows tumbling across your driveway and the shadows notice you flinching. The thought gets under their skin, starts them asking questions to your back as you walk away. “Are we something to fear?” Two nights later, the shadows pile into three dimensions, hop twice, and fly off on soundless wings.

The sun isn’t alive. It’s better than alive. It swims, self-sustaining, through endless void. All we in its orbit think and do is a byproduct of its audacious existence.

We must hope that our current selves will one day step aside to make room for better versions of us.