Most people define spring by either the calendar or the position of the sun.
A neighbor, old Thom, walked by, tipping his hat. "Fine weather, Silas. Finally feels like spring." months of spring
The trees, which had been skeletal during the Knife and weeping during the Drowning, suddenly erupted. It wasn't a slow process. In the Month of the Breath, the world seemed to exhale. Green shoots punched through the mulch. Buds on the cherry tree outside Silas’s window popped like tiny fireworks. Most people define spring by either the calendar
The first month came with a reputation for cruelty. They called it the Month of the Knife. The snow was gone, but it left behind a landscape that looked like a bruised corpse—brown grass, black mud, and trees that looked like fractured bones against the sky. Finally feels like spring
The world was mud. The roads were rivers. It felt as though the world would never dry out, that it would remain suspended in this cold, damp limbo forever. The Drowning was the price of resurrection. You had to be submerged before you could surface.
Silas took his tea outside, sitting on the bench that had been buried under snow just weeks ago. He watched the children run through the streets, no longer huddled against the wind, their voices high and sharp in the clean air.