Wim, The Leaf-Leaper

In the bend of a low, mossy branch where the sunlight trickled down like a slow thought, Wim the jumping spider crouched, coiled, and sprang.

He was only the size of an eraser top, striped in warm browns and specks of blue, with big velvet eyes that always looked a little too startled to be afraid. Wim loved three things: the shimmer of dew, the sound leaves made when they flipped in the wind, and the thrill of the leap. He’d spring from leaf to twig to bark and back again, tracing wild aerial spirals just for the joy of motion. It didn’t matter if anyone saw.

Most of the other forest creatures found him odd. The beetles grumbled about his unpredictability. The ants thought he was a distraction. Even the butterflies, with their powdery patience, tilted their wings away when Wim came bounding through.

But Wim didn’t need applause. He had air. He had velocity. He had the wind tugging at his tiny limbs like it wanted him to fly forever.

One day, though, Wim found a leaf unlike any other. It was high up, at the edge of a canopy gap, where the sun cracked through in golden beams. The leaf shimmered with something he couldn’t name. Not dew nor light. Something else.

He made the leap.
And missed.

Down he fell, through brush and bough, past watching beetles and silent butterflies. It wasn’t a long fall, but for a creature so small, the journey stretched like a story being told too slowly.

The branches didn’t catch him. The air didn’t cradle him. He hit the ground with a quiet thud, legs askew, all the rhythm knocked out of him. He twitched once, twice. Then lay still.

The world didn’t notice. The leaf above still shimmered. The beetles kept beetling. A butterfly fluttered past like nothing had changed. Maybe nothing had.

When Wim stirred, it felt like waking from a dream that had ended without permission. His limbs moved, but it wasn’t a dance. His eyes opened, but they saw without wonder. The air, once his playmate, hung heavy and unfamiliar.

He tried to leap.
He didn’t.
So Wim stayed low.

It might’ve gone on like that, a quiet retreat into leaf litter and lichen, if not for the snail.

The snail, whose name was Morrin, carried her world on her back and had no interest in leaping. But she liked to listen. Wim told her about the leaf he missed, about how it shimmered, about how the air used to feel like a promise.
Morrin didn’t offer advice. She offered silence. And in that silence, Wim felt something loosen.

A week later, he climbed a branch. Not a high branch and not to leap, just to see.

And there it was: a breeze that remembered his name. A leaf with a little bounce. The sky doing that thing where it turned everything blue and impossible.

So Wim jumped.

And the wind caught him.

He tumbled midair, legs curled, then flared wide like a burst of petals. For a moment, he wasn’t falling or flying, just suspended in a hush that felt like memory.

He landed not on the shimmer-leaf, but on one next to it. It trembled under him. It held.

Above him, the leaf still shimmered. Maybe it always would. Maybe some leaps aren’t meant to reach. Maybe the joy is in the arc, not the arrival.

Wim crouched.
Coiled.
And sprang again.