On a dim, cold, and stormy autumn evening, the gusts of wild winds shook the last remnants of leaves from the birch branches. Other trees and bushes had long been stripped bare by the relentless winds. The entire ground was uniformly covered with a sticky, clinging, opaque brown layer of dead leaves. Nature seemed to be dancing in a frenzied primal dance of death.
Amidst the whirl of wind and swirling wet leaf dust stood a solitary pine, tall and proud, with its dark green needles and perfectly straight cones. The pine stood there, gazing longingly over the rolling landscape of Southern Estonia, as if striving to reach even higher to see if any like itself were still visible in the distance. Only the empty, wind-whistling branches of leafless trees could be seen in the distance. The old pine sighed and closed its eyes. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the wind shifted and began to rage from the opposite direction. The half-asleep mast pine jerked and tried to resist the wind, but it was too late. The fierce wind that had caught him tore dozens of perfectly straight cones straight from the top, sending them plummeting towards the wet and cold ground with great force.
The old, weathered pine tried to catch the falling cones, but it couldn't undo what had happened. Those cone offspring were lost, destined to perish before maturity. The wind had played its cruel game of hide and seek.
The cone offspring landed on the soft, sticky bed of leaves, rolled away from the pine, and lay on the ground. Now the pitch-black night had enveloped everything, the eye couldn't see even half a meter ahead. The freezing raindrops froze, and the young fallen cones were covered with an icy layer. Suddenly, the wind subsided, and instead of the stormy winds and icy rain, beautiful snowflakes began to fall in the increasingly cold air, each one unique and exquisite. The snowflakes descended slowly and softly onto the frozen cone bodies, drifting gently.
