I believe summer was yesterday. In fact, I'm quite certain of it. Yesterday there were leaves on the trees and blueberries to pick and nothing moved in the August heat, the nowhere month, the nothing month. The U.S. has no big holidays in August, nor even small ones. It was a long day, a boredom day, the kind of day that just goes on and on.

This morning, it was November and the heavy snow fell.

...

The winter will be many days. And many nights. Mostly nights.

Though not as dark as summer nights. The snow makes the light from the street lamps reflect softly onto everything, so visibility is decent. I can trudge out to the edge of my property and listen to the wolves howl and know that if they should seek me, I will not stumble as I go back indoors.

My house is in Suburbia, but I know these wolves, and they don't seem to care about civilization. 

Why would they? When you can blend into the shadows perfectly and vanish in a trice, there is little to fear.

Then again, I only ever see them from the fifth floor of my house. I can never actually see their bodies. Just their wide eyes. They're always showing the whites of their eyes. That's not something you want to see a canine do. 

On an unrelated note, my neighbors across the street have been missing for a few weeks. I wonder where they ran off to? 

...

I stare at the fire in the fireplace. Today's fire is named lucifer. Not the big scary, fall-from-grace lucifer. Little lucifer. His parents named him. Parents sometimes give their kid a big name and hope they'll grow into it. I know one kid named "Billy the Mountain". That's his first name. Not a nickname. Billy the Mountain. The kid happens to be fat. He punches anyone who calls him Billy the Mountain.

luficer has no great ambitions, but is content to be a hearth fire and warm people's feet and boil their cauldrons. His parents are very disappointed. But what can they expect? lucifer was never in heaven in the first place, so it's not like he could fall from it.

lucifer is a joyous little thing. Can't hardly sit still, but bounces around all over the place. It's difficult to see his face when he won't sit still. But if he sat still, he wouldn't be a big fire, would he? He'd be a candle, or an electric light.

lucifer hates electric lights. They cast light that does not move, does not live. lucifer used to have more friends around before electric lights made everyone put out their candles. He tells me, I remember when light was a living thing. Before electricity, every light available to humanity moved in some way. Be it the sun that crossed the sky or the fire that danced in the hearth, or even the flicker of a candle, all light was ever-changing. Ephemeral. It couldn't last. The sun set, the candle ran out, the fire died and its coals had to be banked for the next day. You could only have light for so long before it failed you.

And now, says lucifer, now you can sit in a room with an electric light and no windows and have no idea what time it was and slowly go nuts. I tell him, yes, this is used as a method of torture.

I have no electric lights in my house. Per lucifer's suggestion. I either stay up late and read by candlelight, or I go to bed super-early. I can't imagine you would want to put up with my house. I don't mind. This place isn't for guests anyway.

 Of course, if you do visit and what to stay up late, the floors of my house have longer days as they get higher. Floor 400 is perpetual noon.

I'm probably not going to invite you to my house. 

 

...

Surely summer was yesterday. Surely I can go back to it. Now that the snow falls, I miss the heat, the green fields, the wind in the trees that sounds like the sea shore. I will go back to it. I will step back into a time when all plants live, when trees are not the monarchs of a cold and lonely world.

Then I shall get bored, and wish for the quiet minimalism of winter.

There are wolves in all seasons, anyway. 

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