The vibrant colors of Autumn are so short-lived, and give way to the dismal colors of winter. The leaves rattle like dry bones, and swirl like dust-devils in untrod corners. The spirits are here. They will drift through the tall, dead grasses. They will get tangled in the sky-reaching knuckles of bare trees. They will spook the cat, or perhaps the cat will spook them. They will live in our old grandfather clock, and sweep through our dreams. “How do you do?” they will say, sipping out of miniature tearoses filled to the brim of petal swirls with a wan brew of steeped cobwebs and the crushed leaves of cypress picked from Böcklin's lost painting. You will wake only after Faustian bargains and Sisyphian labors, which will melt away inconsequentially. After you leave for work, they will stoop over the faucet, subsisting on the clockwork drip of the cold, cold tap, waiting for you to return so they may warm themselves by the accidental charge from your carpet stockings. Or perhaps they will enjoy the warm glow caused by the turning of a book leaf. And they will stay until the spring equinox, where they will be replaced with green and fertile spirits. Or perhaps the late autumnal spirits are just the ghosts and ethereal bones of the fey summer elves, waiting to be reborn.