short fiction · 2026-10-06

The Quiet Beats of the Forest

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the hush of an old forest, each leaf becomes a ticking pulse, a quiet beat that measures the passage of days. The wind whispers through bark, and the rings of growth etch a rhythm no eye has ever named. A child once pressed her ear to a trunk and heard a soft drum, as if the tree itself were breathing in measured sighs. Time, she learned, is not a number but a chorus of tiny clicks, each one a leaf’s soft tap against the silence. When the sun dips, the forest settles into its steady, living metronome, and the world feels both vast and intimate at once.