I never had plans to follow up on this, but PuellaPulchra sparked my imagination and here we are.
Stephen sat on a park bench near his home, half paying attention to the air currents as they wafted around him. He could sense the solid objects around him this way, other benches, trees, passersby. If he really concentrated he could see the individual blades of grass.
Leaves swirled around him in the mid autumn air, along with cooler air than what was currently around him, much to his relief. He heard the leaves whisper and chatter as they went past, but with people around he didn't attempt conversation.
Once the park was empty, Stephen started to talk.
"Hello, excuse me-" the leaves all swept by, still chattering to themselves.
"If you would just stop for a moment..."
Still nothing.
"I am talking to you leaves, there's no one else here."
The leaves paused for just less than a second, but the wind quickly carried them off again. With the next lot Stephen twirled his finger, isolating the air current and circling it around. He continued moving his hand to maintain the circular current, having caught a few leaves in his current.
"Can I talk to you?"
The leaves let out a loud chorus of their conversation, as well as expressing their displeasure of going round and round in circles.
Stephen struggled to piece together what they were all saying in the clamour. He was certain that he caught 'I feel sick!' in there, but other than the odd disjointed word, he was getting nowhere.
To save himself a headache, and wrist cramp, Stephen let them go, and he could hear them from the other side of the park as they flew away.
He sighed and leaned back on the bench, allowing his arms to drape along the back. He tilted his head further back so it was dangling over the back of the bench, which he was really too tall for.
He let out a long sigh in a puff of air; so the first attempt had gone badly. There was always another time. They probably just weren't used to Descendants trying to flag them down.
His brown hair was ruffled in a new breeze and his wind sense alerted him to a fresh stream of leaves. The new set of leaves went straight past his nose and swirled in a rough, lazy circle in front of his face.
"You could have handled that better," said a squeaky voice, that appeared to be coming from one of the leaves.
"Well, they weren't going to stop." Stephen commented, raising his eyebrow at the talking leaf. This was a first.
"Nice try though." The leaf sounded like it might have winked, but Stephen wasn't going to be able to tell. "I'll see if I can get some more conversation partners for you. You're one of Jack's, right?"
"That obvious?"
"Tall, dark hair, air powers, can hear what I'm saying. Pretty obvious big guy."
Stephen 'hmmed' and tilted his head to the side before centring it again in a form of agreement.
The leaf giggled and floated forward, tickling his nose for a second before floating back. "Well done for trying though. See you!" the air current dispersed and the leaves disappeared.
Stephen sat up properly, and after a few seconds, frowned.
"Did a leaf just flirt with me?"
That last line might be one of the strangest I've ever written. The leaf probably wasn't actually flirting with him, it was just having a little fun and taking a liking to someone who was actually trying to talk to them, since I would guess that Jack is only one who does, or can.
I still don't think that using leaves to surveillance and as a method of communication would be a great idea, as they will probably move on too quickly, and only a few people would be able to understand them.