The other happy feasters convinced me that the fruit was edible. I picked one, sniffed it, and tried a small bite. It was so ripe that juice and soft flesh gushed into my mouth as my teeth pierced the skin. It was far sweeter than a sun-ripened plum, almost sickeningly so. Then the flavor of it flooded my mouth and I nearly swooned with delight. I discarded the large round seed and reached for another.

I don’t know how many I ate. When I finally stopped, the skin of my belly was tight against the waistband of my trousers, and my arms were sticky to the elbow with juice. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and came back a little to myself. The pile of seeds at my feet numbered at least a score. Instead of feeling queasy, I felt only blissful satiation.

As I walked slowly away, I tingled with well-being. I became aware of the music of the forest, a symphony made by the subtle buzzing of insects, the calls of birds, the flutter of leaves in an unseen breeze overhead. Even my deadened footfalls were a part of the whole. It was not a symphony of sound alone. The scents of loam and moss, leaf and fruit, meshed with the sounds I heard, and the physical sensations of walking, of brushing past a low branch or sinking deep into moss. The muted colors in the gentled light were a part of it. It was all an amazing whole, an experience that involved me more completely than anything I’d ever felt in my life.

“I’m drunk,” I said aloud, and even those words intertwined with the sudden spiraling fall of a leaf and the soft snag of a cobweb across my face at the same moment. “No. Not drunk. But intoxicated.”