Deeper in the Carpathian woods, where the sun is a stranger and the wind speaks in old tongues, the ground lies thick with copper leaves—coins spent by autumn in her final, lavish gesture. The air is heavy, laced with the musk of moss and the slow, patient rot of centuries. Here, a great beech stands at the heart of the forest, leaning but unbroken, its trunk bowed in the manner of those who have weathered many storms. It is a lesson writ in bark and sinew: that to endure is not always to resist, but sometimes to yield, to bend and yet remain unbowed.