It started as a salty warm fall day. The sun shone through the orange and red leaves. Scampering critters darted through the dry leaves kicking up the smell of moist rich black soil in their wake. The sound of Koda snickering in his hiding spot behind a bush at the top of the hill. Mariel feigned her little brother to be imperceivable as she searched in all the wrong places. Koda squatted wide-eyed holding his breath as she drew near to peak behind a tree. Finally, she leaped at him and grabbed him up in a fit of tickling. Digger playfully bounded side to side head low wanting in on the action. Bright Eyes sat aloof on a branch turning his head around and blinking his big black eyes before looking back at the critter in the leaves.

“Get her Digger,” Koda exclaimed shrinking in on himself in an attempt to thwart her tickling. The badger, Digger, rolled on his back exposing his chubby belly to Mariel begging her to play with him also.

Bright Eyes dropped from his perch and swiped his prey from the ground landing with his meal in the next tree. The owl watched the play with disinterest as he enjoyed his meal.

“You cheated.” Koda had squirmed free and sat panting just out of reach.

“Me?” Mariel covered her chest with her hand in astonishment at the accusation. “How could I cheat when I’m blindfolded?” She pointed at the light brown cloth she often wore tied around her eyes. Bright Eyes tipped his head up from his meal in the nearby tree to look at Koda.

Koda looked back at the white owl in the tree and stuck his tongue out. “I know what symbio-sight is, Mariel.” He held his chin high, brow raised, with a look on his face that said I might be a toddler but I’m smart too.

Mariel pulled down her blindfold. Her enlarged pupils were ringed with a thin line of acorn brown iris’. She paused for a moment to let Koda look at them allowing him the rare gift of seeing how similar her eyes were to her totem before diverting them to the sea.

Koda turned to see Digger burrowing into the earth looking for a snack of his own. The activity quickly peaked the boy’s attention, and he feverishly joined his totem in its work. Koda and badger quickly piled soft black dirt behind them digging between their feet. Koda could feel the critter beneath through his symbio-sense. He whooped in excitement as the badger snatched out his prize, a wriggling black mole. It squirmed only a moment before the badger shook the life from it. Koda looked back with flickering eager eyes wondering if Mariel had seen. She squatted to her heel's intense concentration on her face.

Something was falling from the sky over the sea to the north. Something bright. It looked like a star falling in the day sky but larger. Mariel pulled up her blindfold and gave a short whistle.

Bright Eyes dove from the tree abandoning his mostly eaten meal and took to the air toward the falling object. Mariel breathed in slow and deep through her nostrils. She slowed her heart and felt as if she were falling into the earth before her senses dulled and awakened anew through the eyes of her totem. She felt the winds tugging at the feathers around her neck and wings. She saw the object falling before her just beyond the great sea. She thrust her wings harder wanting to draw nearer to the day star. She had to see it up close. She strained toward her object of obsession with a determined intensity, only vaguely aware of the ripples and waves rushing below her.

Koda watched amazed looking back and forth between his sister and the disappearing owl. There were none among the Viv so adept at complete symbio-sense. There were few capable of it at all. Most Viv were gifted with an allotment of kinesthesis for sure, but only a few had it to the point of full absorption and only Mariel had it to the point of entirety. She lived inside her totem. She became him.

Koda squinted at the bird as it vanished. He turned back to Mariel and saw her sinking to the ground. She fell to the dirt, her eyes clouded over. He rushed to her and shook her, but she was in too deep to feel him. “Wake up.” Koda shook her again. Koda looked around nervously. Fear coiled around his chest. He jumped on her back hoping to annoy her enough to break her from her depth of kinesthesis. When she did not respond he shook her violently. “Wake up!” She didn’t move. She didn’t appear to be breathing. Koda overwhelmed with anxiety did the only thing his young mind could imagine. He ran for his Paw.

Gunter sat atop a stump brooding over some deep thought twisting his chin vines which he grew out in the form of a goatee. His black moss hair appeared wet sagging nearly to his shoulders from neglect. His dark eyes peered off to some unseen apparition in the distance. Koda sprinted in screaming alarm breaking his father's reverie. “I think Mariel is dying!” Gunter stood alarmed face turning pale as a summer cloud. Koda dropped his hands to his knees to catch his breath. “She went afar off with Bright-eyes and stopped breathing. I cannot wake her. She isn’t breathing.” His fifteen-year-old toddler eyes as big as a pair of full moons convinced Gunter he truly believed what he was relaying despite his lack of real-life experience with Viv's death.

“What is the matter?” Koda’s mother called down from the kitchen. She whipped her hands on her hand rag and looked out from the woven nest built on the low branch of the Everwood tree.

“There is something a matter with Mariel, Blossom,” Gunter called back up. “I have to go see to it.” Gunter looked up at his wife peering out the round window woven in the side of the walnut-shaped lodge attached to the side of the Everwood. “I must hurry Blossom. I will return presently.”

“Don’t you Blossom me; I will not be disregarded with flattery Gunter. As if I were some sixty-year-old flippant youth, to be cast aside at a whim. I will be coming along.” Hastily as she spoke, she twisted her hair vines into a bun and donned her bonnet as if she were going into the village rather than rushing off to an emergency. Then she slid down the tree and swept clean her bark dress.

“Don’t doddle show us the way boy,” Gunter demanded already walking in the direction Koda had come. Koda ran ahead and Blythe was fussy the entire way. She pulled up short and gasped as they discovered Mariel face down in the tall grass at the top of the hill. Her lips had turned an unnatural teal and her normal dark cambium lines faded to pale brown streaks tracing her slack cheeks. Blythe trembled and rooted down searching for the strength to resist the terror before her.

“Get water Koda, quick.” Gunter sprang into action grabbing Mariel’s face and patting her cheek roughly. “Wake up Moonbeam.” He muttered with urgency as he straightened out her limbs taking note of the sun fading over the horizon. “Blythe take her feet and help me to spin her around.” He looked over at his shoulder to see his wife rooted to the ground quivering and uncharacteristically silent. “Blythe.”

She shook her head and pulled up her roots blinking twice then grabbed her daughter's feet as Gunter grabbed her hands. “Koda dig, a hole at her feet,” Gunter commanded. As his son appeared at his side. He sat down the pot of water and began to burrow out a hole at Mariel’s feet. “Have digger help,” Gunter grunted.

The Badger fell in eagerly burrowing a second hole with ferocity. Gunter and Blythe held up Mariel’s limp body. When two sufficient holes were dug Gunter dismissed Koda and digger with a grunt and plunged Mariel’s feet into the holes. He knelt down and began to pile the fresh dug soil back into the holes around his daughter’s feet. Then he grabbed up the pot of water and poured it slowly over the soft patted soil. Blythe held Mariel upright. She stretched Mariel’s hands toward the falling sun. “HaShem don’t take my daughter from me please.” She pleaded with her quivering fragile voice. “Have mercy on us. Bring her back. Let her feel the rays of your sun. Let her feel the warmth of life. Help her to root down.” She begged the unseen.

Gunter glanced up at his wife’s tear-filled prayers. He swallowed down the choking lack of dioxide and tried to force himself to concentrate. He had to get Mariel to breathe. He closed his eyes and whispered a silent prayer to HaShem. What was he missing? The song. The song of the morning bird. The song that caused the nostrils of the plants to open in the morning. The song that caused them to breathe in deep the breath of life before the sun rose. To fill themselves with precious dioxide to be carried with the sugars of the earth. She needed carbs. He began to mimic the sweet melody of the morning birds. Blythe joined in with Koda making an attempt. Soon the birds of the trees were stirred and began to look around from their perches in the trees bewildered. The sun was fading dropping down to rest on the flat horizon over the sea.

Gunter tucked the blindfold from her face to see her eyes still closed. He prayed and shook her. Finally, small buds of leaves slowly uncurled from Mariel’s fingertips. The tender leaflets turned to the sun. Her vines of hair stood on end and began to bud. Her Bark slacks and blouse hardened and stretched upward to cover her neck and shoulders. It was too slow. She would not awaken in time. Desperation welled in Gunter. He had to do something drastic. He reached up and wrapped his fist over the slow-growing vines on her fingernails. He clasped them firmly and yanked. Tearing them from their roots. Mariel squealed and her eyes flashed open, dark as the midnight sky, large as chasms. She collapsed into her father's arms sucking in the cool evening air.

It began as a warm delightful day filled with life. It ended as a frigid alarming evening at the end of fall and the beginning of the coldest most desperate year-long winter the Viv had ever known.