The elves, of course, were still busily decorating the forest for the Festival. When they weren’t making drums for the fairies’ dance, they fashioned garlands of the colored, fallen leaves to decorate the pines’ boughs, and draped strands of ivy around the hardwoods’ trunks. They were happy and industrious workers, mostly because, to them, their work was play.
Today they were into the piney section of the forest. The air there was filled with the wonderful fragrance of the trees. They started as soon as the morning light broke. But because the days were so short now, they had to work quickly to meet their day’s goal before the darkness fell again.
That didn’t mean skipping lunch, though. Elves let nothing interfere with their meals. Food keeps them happy so that they can whistle merry tunes as they work.
Just before noon, they put aside their tools and found the lunch sacks that their mother had packed. They were talking amongst themselves, trying to decide where they would like to rest, when the youngest one heard a sound off to the east.
“Listen!” he said. “Do you hear music?”
The elves fell silent, and sure enough, a lilting melody was drifting through the trees. They decided to follow it. The only thing better than lunch, after all, was lunch with music. So they skipped through the woods, in search of the sound.
Before long, they came to a clearing where the music completely filled the air. In its center, a young tree dressed in her fine autumn leaves was pirouetting joyfully.
She stopped in mid-twirl when she saw them.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting an audience! I was just rehearsing for the Festival.”
The elves giggled at her shyness and the elder one introduced himself and his brothers and explained that they were taking a lunch break from decorating the fairy drums.
“You’re the ones who do that?” the tree said. “I’ve been seeing them all over the forest. You do such beautiful work!”
“And you do such beautiful dancing!” the elder elf said. “We would love to watch you rehearse while we dine, if you wouldn’t find it an intrusion.”
“Please do!” the tree said. “I dance much better, actually, when I’m dancing for someone. You just took me by surprise.”
So she danced, and the elves ate, elated to be treated to such a wondrous show. And when at last she took her bow, they applauded and whistled until she blushed. They gave her a cup of the morning’s fresh dew and shared their cakes to thank her.
When the last crumbs were gone, they bid her farewell and returned to their work. And she danced on and on.