Thanks Wolfram-- I wasn't nuts about "disappearing" either, but I couldn't, in that moment, come up with the right word. I'm hoping a better one comes to me as I polish and tweak.

I couldn't come up with a better word either, or I would have made the suggestion. Besides, I don't have a very large, uh, command-of-lots-of-word-thingie.

almost subsumed?

fading below?

running below?

Oooh... fading. I like that. Something like that at any rate.

Very evocative. Also, now I'm hungry.

What about "the happy sound of the gently cascading water a background to the equally happy sounds of conversation?"

Those winter scenes, filled with snow and bare-limbed trees and length shadows—to me, the only thing they had appeared to represent was death.

The word death bothers me here. That seems strong for a child's memory.

It's long rather than length shadows, but you would have caught that.

Actually, I think I might have meant lengthy

And she's remembering it through the veil of young adulthood as well, not just childhood-- maybe there's a way to make that clearer.

How about this?

Those winter scenes, filled with snow and bare-limbed trees and lengthy shadows—as a child, they'd felt so desolate and lonely. As I'd grown older and learned about the cycle of seasons, more and more, they seemed to represent death. A pretty cover for a world that had to rejuvenate, whereas the paradise where I lived was constantly renewing itself, never allowing itself to fall into such a state.

I like that. "Death" just kind of stopped me before, since the rest sounded like a childhood memory.

Fascinating watching the process of wrestling with something like this. Though you might not believe it from my verbose tendencies I was trained to be over-concise - the fewest words were best. Watching you polish by adding words to make it clearer, and improving the emotional tone as a result. So contrary to the "always cut, never add" that was pounded into my head. And a living demonstration of how wrong it was, at least the extreme version I was taught.

Brevity is my strongest and weakest aspect in writing. I also prefer less words to more, but now it's a chore to add any words at all. My initial stories are two sentences. Then I have to add from there.