Winters Touch

The darkest days loom closer, the winter has cometh and the land grows weary and cold. Rain pours from a grey sky, leaves fall and the greens of a now distant summer slip slowly into faded memory. Soon the frosts will come, their cold bite snapping at the heels of those who dare brave their wrath. The snows loom nearer threatening to bringing the freezing death, their path laid bare by the tumultuous furls and crests of the giant ocean tides, blown hither and thither by the winds eternal.
Each day sees the sun fighting with the moon, their eternal war rages overhead as we approach the long lunar nights, the moons chance to hold dominance in a jewel studded ceiling, to dance in the pantheon of the sky's elite and cast the sun asunder from its summer reign.

Animals huddle close for warmth, Birds sit shivering on empty tree branches and subterranean nightmares dig deeper so as to escape the watery purge to which all the land has befallen. Tides have risen, clouds have emptied and the rivers burst their banks. Water floods across field, dell and yard. Every sign of summer has been washed clean.
To look across this land, you would see saturated fields, dripping forests and the destruction wrought by winters foul touch. No joy sings aloud like before. The sounds of life no longer echo from mountain to valley as the young grow and the old reminisce. Now, all that remains, is the steady drip as water soaks this land and its inhabitants hide. Winter brings death and with death comes despair and fear.

So our land braces, these last autumn months spent harvesting the stocks required to tackle such an abominable animal as winter. The fields stripped clean and the orchards emptied, not so much as an ear of corn or a hard crusted apple remain.

Winter is coming...