in the great love they bore one another

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The forest was large and thickly overgrown with all kinds of leaf-bearing trees. Usually, it is cold this time of year and it even happens that it snow, but this November was relatively warm. You might have thought it was summer except that the whole forest was strewn with fallen leaves-some yellow as saffron, some red as wine, some the color of gold and some of mixed color. The leaves had been torn down by the rain, by the wind, some by day, some at night, and they now formed a deep carpet over the forest floor. Although their juices had run dry, the leaves still exuded a pleasant aroma. The sun shone down on them through the living branches, and worms and flies which had somehow survived the autumn storms crawled over them. The space beneath the leaves provided hiding places for crickets, field mice and many other creatures who sought protection in the earth. On the tip of a tree which had lost all its other leaves, two still remained hanging from one twig: Ole and Trufa. For so