Anna lays awake and unmoving while the first of Przy's two moons sets in the northern sky. The second moon will rise with the sun then race quickly across the morning sky and fall below the horizon before noon.
Even in the dark Anna can tell that they are back. She listens hard, her closed eyes squinching tighter with the effort. And there, behind her father's faint snigger-snores she can hear their breezy breathings. They are close, right outside her window.
She feels the excitement hop-scotching through her making her want to jump up from her bed and race, bare feet flapping and pig-tails bouncing, to throw aside the window shades and stand there watching them with her hands clippity-clapping at their return.
But it is too early. She knows it's best to let her parents sleep and to let her visitors sit without being disturbed until the sun rises and they have set their roots deep into the soil.
Anna takes a deep breath and smells the green leaves and the sweet fruits. She remembers stories of places where children climb in trees or hang swings in them and she laughs at the thought. Imagine building a house in a tree. She thinks about how exciting it would be to go to sleep in a tree house and to wake up somewhere far, far away.
She giggles at the silly stories and secretly wishes that they were true, that trees really did stay in one place, that they didn't pull up their roots and move every night.
Leaves, close outside her window, chatter in the breeze.
Oh, she thinks, if they could only talk, what tales they would tell.
As the first rays of the rising sun breathe light into the day, Anna hears the sound of roots grunching through layers of earth, setting themselves in place for the day.
Come nighttime they will be gone.
and I thought my only problems were squirrels digging up my plants (smile).
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