"It's not what you wanted to hear is it?"

She sat, wrapped in a blanket, her hair tousled and teased by a restless night's sleep, peering at me. I tried to decipher the tone, the softened cast of her eyes and the set of her shoulders. I couldn't read her at all. I never could.

The trees whispered a ceaseless symphony; a sound that collapsed down to a muted hiss and then after a pause, full of anticipation, began to swell into a rapid-fire, multi-toned resonant pulse with everything in the path of the moving air adding its perspective. My eyes saw nothing as I followed the sound with my ears and sensed the movement against my skin. The song was percussive and chaotic and held me entranced until she reached out a put her hand on my leg, rousing me from my reverie.

"Hey," she said, "are you listening to me?"

Her touch sent a restless quiver through my body and I realized that I was cold, that my feet were numb and that my back hurt, hunched over a fire that had sputtered out with nothing more to consume. 

"I'm listening".