Sublime

No mates exist for countless miles around, and a chestnut, though both male and female, will not serve itself.

It strikes her that she envies him. His years of enforced tranquility, the patience of his slowed mind, the expansion of his blinkered senses. He can watch the dozen bare trees in the backyard for hours and see something intricate and surprising, sufficient to his desires, while she—she is still trapped in a hunger that rushes past everything.

He enters the forest.

grok,”