On the last night of October, the patch does something it won’t do any other night: it tells you where it goes.
“November,” says the biggest pumpkin, “is just October holding its breath. I don’t disappear. I’m simply elsewhere — the way a song is elsewhere when nobody’s humming it. The door closes, the costume comes off, and I wait under the floorboards of the year with all the other Octobers, stacked like blankets.”
“You built a universe that changes its clothes,” says the smallest pumpkin. “Most places never do. They just get older. You should be proud of that.”
Then all ten pumpkins grin at once, and for a moment the whole patch smells like cinnamon and rain.
wind and owls, synthesized live — no audio files, just like the music box.