Wave with a Smile

She lay in the dead road, golden, crisp. Her life but a rush of colours, scattering the concrete river around her. Memories of playing in trees and dancing in fields, reveries of siblings waving at her flourish. She'd once fancied herself an adventurer, daring to do battle against her rooted destiny, frolicking through the winds to fight the swinging trunk-ed beasts. She blossomed early, an array of boldness shining from the fancy colours she adorned. She was confident, a show-off, maybe even a flirt, but she loved every moment of it.

She was such a traveller in her teens. She explored the world; countrysides of dancing corn, concrete woods of golden sunsets, lake sides of energetic insects - a high flyer, they'd call her. One day she'd settle down, so they said, that one day which never came. She became weathered and beaten, but she never settled. She went through a phase, as all aging do, where her roots were dyed magenta to hide her wrinkled scalp. Others would whisper in the wind about her, always chanting, always mocking. So what if she had to odd wrinkle? She was growing old with style! That didn't stop her running, tumbling, skating across the world around her. Her travels had led her to the roads beneath her, the road she now lay on. This was her final road - the road to another world. Hit by a car and left to decay, her golden roots had taken her to the end of time.

This leaf's life was up.