The Gwiddern Tree in Autumn

It's that time again! It's been getting darker for more than a week now. There's no point keeping your leaves green. Without thinking about it you cork 'em up and break down the green chlorophyll into amino acids for precursors in the spring; reveal hidden xanthophylls and beta-carotene. Then, fattened to total satisfaction by a season's worth of hapless terrified hikers, you synthesize inside of yourself the the red anthocyanin. Never mind if you want to. It's getting dark.

Anthocyanins (red): Autumn

Chlorophyll (green): Spring Summer

Beta-carotene (orange): Spring Summer Autumn

Xanthophylls (yellow): Spring Summer Autumn

As your branches start to shed leaves your fruits split and stink, their thick outsides fading to a yellow-grey then overflowing with a lumpy green-but faintly reddening substance; once anguished faces grown indistinguishable from one another as they simply rot, exquisite terminal expressions of horror sagging and dropping to litter the earth at your feet. The flies start to circle.

Gwodder approaches you slowly as the sun goes down, cloaked in green robes and sticking to the shadows, holding a heavy burlap sack tied to a stick over his shoulder. Knee deep in water he wades to one of your great pontoons and clambers up through tangled roots to the base of your trunk. He stuffs the bindle into a familiar hollow and climbs higher. As he reaches the first of your branches, you let a vine snake down to wrap around his skull and yank him up into your growing redness. You twist.

Gwodder's lifeless body drops like so many others before it from the tops of your branches and lands with a pleasing thud among your roots. You pull him down and inwards. A pleasant tingle. At the end of one of your still-vital branches, a fruit forms. The last of the season. Gwodder's smiling face, eyes wide open, and already starting to stink.

• You start to make another Gwodder inside of yourself
• You decide not to spawn a Gwodder this year
• You want to eat just one more hiker before winter