Fall of a year - GBE2 & BFF prompts

Lily watched and waited. Wintertime was always hard. So barren, so dark, so sleepy. Beautiful as the ice patterns on her windows were, they couldn't compete with the need, the urgent desire for green shoots and pale lemon sunshine. Those snow flurries, building softly to drifted dunes waiting for the child within to roll the head of the snowman, they could not hold a candle to the ripple of fluffy catkins and dangling lamb tails. The crispness of the air, sharp in the lungs, eliciting dragon breath on daily walks, even that could not fight the lust for gentle showers, swathes of cherry blossom and the scent of bluebells. Wintertime would pass, but she wished it away faster.

Springtime came. Lily looked back to winter and knew it had been good, but this was better. Spring's youthful exuberance made her heart race, her smile widen, as it raced across the woods, the fields, the parks, the village, and the people. They looked up now, embraced the breeze, smiled at nodding snowdrops and grinned when flamboyant daffodils and blousy tulips raised their faces to the sun which peeked from tattered ribbons of cloud. Lambs gambolled, children emerged from their coated and booted cocoons, delicate pink flesh freed to the touch of renewal. Lily longed to race over the downs at their side. She yearned to roll in the first new grass, lay and listen to the pull-crunch of ewes eating to feed their frolicking offspring. She did not want that Spring to pass, tried not to long for Summer's bounty.

Spring had been fresh, delicate, invigorating by slow degrees, but now Summertime rolled around, casual, filled with sensual heat and the brilliance of light. Rainbows sparkled in every glance, sprinklers creating constantly shifting arcs of crystalline beauty. Flowers proliferated, splashes of colour so vivid they seemed unreal. Children turned from untried pink to toughened brown, like ripened nuts. Lily turned her gaze on the girls with their long legs, striding confident in impossibly short skirts, made of swinging ponytails and slicks of pearly lipstick; the boys with bare chests, long shorts and glasses perched in nests of cropped hair. The future walking her pavement, heading to the coffee house, the movies, the river where beer would be cooling in sparkling water, where flirting and laughing and joy would be, as it was every year.

Lily tried to ignore the dreams, the signs; tried not to fret over ephemeral thoughts which served only to spoil her Summer. There was no substance to her fears. No explanation for them. She could not understand why she had developed a sudden terror of the third season, a time she could no longer bring herself to name as it came closer, too close. The world was peaceful, no wars raged, no conflicts existed which could induce her absolute terror at the arrival of the coming months. She walked down her path, leaned on the gate, got a neighbour’s kid to bring her a cone when the ice cream van came round, tried to be happy at the end of the day, the last day of Summer.

Far away, in an office the world did not know existed, two men who had no names, no paper trail, no existence in the world, read the paper before them. They eyed each other, read again, nodded, pressed buttons and unleashed the chemicals on the test village.

Autumn arrived in Lily's world. It brought children falling in the streets like dead leaves. It brought coughing to adults, bright blood expelled, red like Fall foliage. It brought bonfires at Halloween, the dead lighting up the night like fireworks as their diseased flesh crackled and smoked. There would be no Autumn for Lily, her world vanished into hidden history.

Author's Note - The inspiration for this story came from a random thought - We say Springtime, Summertime, Wintertime, but I've never heard anyone say Falltime or Autumntime... So why wasn't there any Autumn time?  This is what happened when  thought about that!