Winter's End, Part 2
This is a second part to a longer story. Read part 1 here!
Spring
She feels the moment his rule ends like a thousand bolts of light to the heart, and they break her from her dawn reverie. Power floods from his veins to hers in a single breath. All at once, her sleep-dulled senses sharpen to a gleaming edge.
She hears the dozing bears in the caves of her mountain grunt in their sleep as they stir. She hears the quiver of the pine needles in her wood as early risers spring from branch to branch in search of food. She feels the bubbling of the streams beneath cracking ice, and the tiny heartbeats of all the little creatures buried in a network of narrow tunnels beneath the snow.
Waiting, all of them, for her.
With the end of Winter’s rule, she feels rejuvenated, awake at last for the first time in months. She sets the teacup aside – it has long gone cold despite her efforts. Tamber feels her shift beneath him and hops from her lap. His eyes are bright with renewed life and his closeness to her growing power. He lopes ahead as she makes her way down from the library and along her shimmering halls.
It is deliciously warm inside and she is loath to step out in the cold air of the world, but leave she must. She pauses on the threshold and curls her toes into the earthen floor of her atrium.
When she steps out through the great oak doors, her feet are booted, her woollen skirts long and sown with seeds that scatter on the air with every step. A cloak appears from nowhere and drapes itself about her shoulders. Fresh wool for warmth, and embroidered with more seeds, flowers, grass, and tree blossoms. Tiny houses line the hem, and as the lights of the village in the valley below wink out in favour of the rising sun, so too do those on her cloak, the thread rooves of the cottages ablaze in the morning light.
She descends into the woods, following the same path she has trod for a thousand years. She presses her palms to the trunk of every tree within reach and breathes wakefulness into their dormant boughs. The conifers she leaves alone save for a gentle grazing of her fingers. They are her constants through the winter, green always, even when their brethren shed their leaves and stand sleeping through the long dark. She crosses a brook frozen with ice, and as she steps over, she leaves a stream of melt in her wake. The rivers follow suit. They shake off their cold winter shields and allow the sun to warm their banks once more.
Halfway down the mountain lies the shrine the village have built in her honour. It is the closest the people dare come to her castle, though many see her wandering about the woods and in the fields throughout the season. As she approaches the crude stone effigy of herself, she sees that the shrine had already received the first of its visitors. A bunch of crocuses, purple and yellow, lie at her stone feet, along with a pair of thick woollen gloves, and a handful of copper and silver coins.
Her fingers are pink and stiff with cold. She tugs on the gloves with a grateful smile – she never can remember to bring her own. The coins she has no need for but appreciates the gesture all the same. She picks them up, admiring how they catch the light, and then sends them back to their owners with a snap of her fingers. The flowers she cradles in her palm and will carry with her for her new crown.
Just as she makes to continue, she glances back at her stone face and then looks north towards the castle of Winter, hidden from view by the trees. She wonders, quietly to herself, if the villages have ever built a shrine for him.
Winter
He remains standing there for a long while, staring at the fragments of his shattered crown. His reign, melting away into nothing despite the frigid air. Just like that he is at his end. The mantle he has carried through the season, all those slow heartbeats, lifts from his shoulders and his senses dull.
Still, he can feel the rousing of the bears and the other beasts, but now they are distant. They turn their noses toward the warmer air of spring that will soon overwhelm and drive away the chill he has nurtured for himself.
The last spike of his crown melts into a puddle of water. An age-long, bone-deep weariness pulls on his limbs until he sinks into the welcome embrace of his favourite chair. Erebus lifts his tired body from beside the hearth, stretches, and lumbers over the curl up at his master’s feet. He feels Winter’s weariness as his own.
The warmth the great wolf gives off brings comfort, companionship, and unlike other warmths, Winter does not mind this one so much. He takes comfort in the weight of that large head resting over his feet. There, the pair of them will remain undisturbed for the next three seasons until Autumn removes his own crown of twisted hazel and leaves the colour of fire, and bids Winter wake from his slumber. It seems so very far away.
Not quite ready to fade just yet, he gazes out through his window and sweeps the valley below, the mountains that cradle it, with his blue eyes. The villagers will be hosting their Turning feast soon – brought on by the sighting of the first flowers in the woods. Crocuses, yes, he has seen them too. He never can bring himself to smother them in snow. Those purples and yellows are beautiful, even if they are not of his making. Even though they herald the end of his reign. Now the preparations for the festival are in full swing, a time when the villagers celebrate his demise and welcome their new queen as if she is not the usurper he knows her to be.
Do they truly despise him so much? He, who laces the world with godly snows, who nourishes the weary earth so that they might replant in rich soil and have food to harvest in the autumn? He, who puts the birds and the beasts to sleep so that they may rest and return anew? He, who freezes the rivers and the lesser lakes so the villagers might enjoy gliding over the ice as they never can in the air or on land?
He brings a coldness with him – that is true, but that cold is his gift to them that they might love the warmth of the sun all the more. Yet they give their love elsewhere. They worship the coming of Spring, the height of Summer, and the bounty of Autumn. There is but one minor feast in the heart of his reign, but that is only to mark the lengthening of the days. A counting down to his departure. It is not born out of love for him.
Something on the eastern mountain catches his eye. At once he is on his feet, so quick a wave of dizziness overtakes him and he has to brace his hand against the window to find his balance. When the world stops spinning, he looks again to the path leading from Spring’s castle. A glimpse of a flower-lined cloak and then the figure is hidden by the trees. But he has seen her. The first his eyes have ever lain upon her.
He has seen her shrine many times – the closest he dares get – but never has he looked upon Spring herself.