For Tom. Runner-Up in The Mystery Box Challenge.
The wind was trying. It chased the flags around the poles this way and that but the flags were not having any. They simply folded over, and over again, like Tai Chi masters who would not be baited. Brown and yellow leaves trickled down from almost empty trees, skittish and unpredictable through the grey sky. Finally, the wind relented, and the flags sulked against their poles, cold and flaccid. The air had grown still, as if the world had finished breathing out and the moment was all waiting. The gargoyle birds clung to branches, with even the smallest finches and wintering hummers severe in their frozen stares. The ground dwellers, too, all stopped their raucous foraging and lay quietly down where they were, serene.