The evening is still and warm. I watch bats in the moonlight, swimming through the viscous air.

I hate evenings like this. The air is bored and it reminisces. Its ghastly memories pour into my mind with every breath I take.

The air fondly remembers screams of rabbits caught by mink in the dead of night, the mere whisper of owls’ wings as talons sink into mouse flesh, the final gasps of elk under wolves’ claws.

It tries to shock me with tales of the sounds and scents of the violence of men against the world. It harangues me with meticulously detailed sagas of the acrid stench of human blood, urine, sweat, gangrenous flesh and feces but I have already heard these stories too many times.

The air revels in its gathering water, earth and fire and hurling them at the living for no other reason than that they are alive, lashing out at those who have what it cannot.

Near morning, the leaves begin to stir as the air tentatively begins to move. The stories diminish and withdraw and I can breathe freely again.