The world was wilder then. We were wilder.
Before the Court, before crowns and thrones, before man.
The world was ruled by beasts of the wild.
My father, Lord Spring, was a mighty warrior. A ram, 15 feet at the shoulder. Aunt Autumn was a stag then, Summer a lion. Fiercest of all was Winter, the black wolf with gleaming teeth, that bit like the frozen wind and howled like a blizzard.
War was constant. My lord father spent every waking minute searching for Winter, to shatter its skull with his mighty horns. By the same token, Summer was constantly stalking us. They would pounce from the brush, and tear open my father’s throat with cruel claws.
I remember one dawn, when our camp met Summer’s. I gored three of Winter’s pack from jaws to haunches before another sunk its teeth into my neck. As I bled out, I saw Summer tear out my father’s entrails, only to be impaled on the antlers of Autumn, charging out of the brush.
As she basked in her victory, Winter appeared just as suddenly, flanked on either side by bears. They brought Autumn down, tearing chunks of flesh from her.
It was glorious.
As the world matured, the seasons took on shapes more suited to those they ruled. I refused. I still long for the days when might ruled this world. Those days will come again, and I will be ready.
I see it. Hurtling towards us like a wonderful meteor. A time when the world will again be war. I will fight for my father, for the creeping thing he will become. I will fight for him against the black, sickening haze of a Winter, finally taking a shape that befits its nature. I will defend him against the forces of summer, in all their cloying, indomitable, heat.
The world will be death, but the cycle will continue, as it always has and always will.
These new gods, the young Summer and outcast Autumn, they will help usher in this new age. They are rash, quick to act. Without Autumn’s tempering presence and Summer’s slow burning nature, the Seasons will fall into disarray.
I am Hurricane, Prince of the Whirling Wind. I am a beast of violence.
I am old. I am patient.
All things in time.
-Excerpt from Mónos’s 'Life Of The Seasons'