Postcard perfect blue sky and the crunch, crunch, crunch of orange leaves, Whisper was convinced she has found the quintessential fall day. That was until the stench of decaying flesh assaulted her. Afraid the slip of a girl rubbed a mother tree for comfort. Whisper took a cautious step deeper into the woods.

The Veil, a mostly solitary people, collected silences. The sudden silence following a barking laugh,the awkward silence of unrequited love, the deep silence around an open grave, all these quiet moments were hunted, found, and, collected to be traded.Whisper begged to go on this solo mission. She’d been shadowing her twin big brothers since she was knee high. She was ready to be in command,

The smell was strengthening. Whisper had hoped to find wispy curls of early morning woodland silence. In decorative bowls wrapped in ribbons, morning silence was highly praised in all the kingdoms. Instead the silence hunter just had a feeling she had to explore. Then after a few minutes she spied it. Red apple bright, the meaty bloom hung from a pampas vine like a skinless hand. A shiver flip flopped in her belly as the glistening petals beaconed in the breeze. She’d heard old fishwives yarn of parasitic flowers, eating acres of forests. Whisper stepped closer. She saw it then, folded like a velvet cape: dead silence, the whooshing breath before something profoundly terrible occurred. The young woman nabbed the silence in her net and scooped it into her quiet sack. Panicked she began to run back to the keeper’s lodge. Red buds popped open in the canopies of trees waving her goodbye.