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[Christopher Sherwood]

---

Absence

Where once his father's garden rippled with the passing breeze,
and sang soothing the calm rustles of whispery secrets
adrift and fleet in moments and movement,
now ended with the advent of Winter,
and the lingering absence of its caretaker.

The lengthening of shadow as Autumn faltered
casting so dim a pall over what was once brazen with life,
A panoply of scents, and all colors.

The cold winds biting through bough, leaf, branch
left brittle and browned,
no longer a whispered rustle, but a hissing under thin grey skies.
A mournful chant of resentment
mouthed by things left in neglect and slowly dying.

Here was change.
And Christopher heard its call, and heard its stories
as clearly as in the bright
crimsons and orange of Summer,
when Night was a brief thing , and the familiar held sway.

A small boy, left alone,
heard lament, and finality on the breath of the world,
but was not afraid,
and set out to do what he could.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

The Forest

Christopher plodded through knee deep snow with dogged, if somewhat ungainly, tempo. Every fresh footfall giving way with reluctance as he methodically broke through the frozen skin coating the powdery white just below. One leg near buried while he forced his full weight upon the other. Straining through the crisp sheet of frost with exaggerated, straddling high-steps.

The metal bucket he carried had long since become a nuisance in regards to maintaining his balance. And so, he had adopted a system of throwing the bucket ahead of himself, as far as he could, then making the march forward to retrieve it.

Christopher grinned at how clever the idea seemed, and at how well it worked. His bright green eyes sparkling like fire as the grin, verging on laughter, splayed across his face. If asked, he decided he would keep this part of his story a careful secret, in hopes of oneday re-using the tactic. His smile grew at the notion, even as his breath came in quick and heavy gusts, and in spite of the clinging cold, he felt the chilly pinpricks of beading sweat on his back.

Given to other thoughts attached to the task at hand, the small boy slowed, and caught his wind.

"The best snow is where the sun cannot shine." he thought to himself.

Stopping for a moment to pick up his bucket, and steal a look behind, Christopher marked the gathering gloom. The snow laden trees above him bunched together closely, and shook their hoary heads.

Sadly, thought Christopher, for the forest was old, and very little sun snuck through and climbed to the ground beneath his feet. Color painted not the trees til they seemed dour and forgotten to him.

Great gnarled branches spiderwebbed the pale, distant blue. Tightening across the sky to cast a single shadow beneath. Making safe things that had lay hidden, and unseen for years uncounted, until further on and deeper, the forest became more akin to a cave...where light and dark don't differ.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

Harbinger

Runs of black birds perch in serried rows
along to tops of the forest.

Jutting points on a crown.

Serrated teeth arrayed.

Swathed in a high hanged mist.

Jet marbles set in shadow
follow the tracery of life
picked out upon the open white.

Croaking guttural greeting,
the ravens cry their callous caw
and take to jagged wing as one.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

Cutting a Path

But for the weight he carried straight armed, and shoulders slumped, his knuckles tight and pointing at his toes, the trip back home was easier than the trip into the woods. His bucket, heavy with snow, bounced into Christopher's knees with each and every step.

A dull thump, a vague pain.

A bruise drawn upon each kneecap most like than not.

His route was tread carefully in his own footprints to avoid misstep and icy fall. He had work to do which would not allow for shortcuts or rest. As days waned quickly in the brief Winter sun, changing out of wet clothes due to carelessness was not a happy option.

Christopher remembered all the little things his father had said to him over the years. Not the least were his warnings about staying safe and vigilant in the outdoors.

"Winter does not forgive..." he whispered to no one. Taking pleasure in the words once gifted to him, and making them as now his own.

His ragged breath feathered the air around him, and clung closely. Tiny ghosts given quick life. Their light, gaseous fingers tickling his lashes before swirling away to who-knew-where.

And so each trip proved less time consuming. Each step widened his path in the snows, and in this simple manner, the boy marked his way across a world lulled into cold and quiet reverie. Emerging unscathed from tree shrouded night, to the bright of day that seemed to him new, and different, and welcomed everytime.

Content in his place, and his task, Christopher dared the season to pause and take notice of him.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

Supplicant

Sinuous stalks that once whispered and shushed the clamor of hectic Summer days, green and vibrant, heavy with springy, conical bulbs eager to be picked, now hung in scabrous, lifeless husks. Dried brown leaves broke at the lightest of touches, and fell like dust. Vinelike stalks, so graceful in memory, wound about in tortured repose, choking out further growth. The now stagnant hop plants clutched claws into the frozen dirt littered with small, disinterred stones and weeds.

The redolence of wet earth replaced with nothing.

Gone were the contented sighs of breeze through the growing green. Winter's breath crackled the ruined garden like the death of dream. Undoing in weeks, what many seasons of work and care had built up by hand.

Christopher crouched low. Down on his knees, back bent, and shoulders hunched. His bare hands cupped close to the roots of the third plant in line, and balanced on the points of his elbows. The pitted ground radiated cold into him wherever his body made contact. Much more like naked rock than neglected soil, it pained the child to stay for so long in so awkward a pose. Made especially so as this was merely an endpoint to a trek through snow choked forest winding far from home. And only one such trip of many.

Drop by drop, frost flecked water fell through his entwined fingers to the anguished grey-brown carpet below. Sucked up greedily, and scarce leaving mark of its passing. The packed snow in Christopher's hands, melting with excruciating slowness, seemed to burn he had held it for so long. The icy sensation turning to its opposite in a way he had never experienced before, nor could he explain.

Still, he bore the aching pain, and burden.

Hoping silently, repeatedly, that his idea would reignite the life he so acutely remembered that was lost here. The sights and scents, and the company of his father. Knowing that the brevity of a Winterday would indeed be long in toil. That only diligence would chase away these ghosts left behind.

Things would go back to how they were.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

The Watchers

With an unwavering dedication to the repetition of exacting ritual, the boy spent solitary his days.

The Winter season became him, and the struggle to preserve what Her many charms were dedicated, and built towards unmaking drove him on until the sameness of every matching moment bolstered his small steps and spun greater a song in its doing.

Little speech did he make. Neither to reassure himself in his lonely task, nor to the relatives who traded shifts in seeing to his well being in the absence of Arahim. And in this did they find the child more and more akin to his mother, and passing strange. However, none could call his bearing despondent, or morose. A fey light still played within his bright green eyes, and a smile lay upon his soft features, but the secretive, and single mindedness of his actions belied his age in an unsettling way to those around him.

Bark and snow whispered at his comings and goings.

The fox laid tracks in line with his, and carried his scent.

A white hooded owl lamented his endeavors, and told his story to the Night's stars when dusk rose in gold smears and heavy purple.

Other things too, bore silent witness just past Christopher's sight.

Older things. Clinging to the forest dark, and patiently making good their own time. Setting hour and intent in synchronicity with the child's own regimented schedule, They marked him as one of their own.

And watched.