The Arrival of Winter.

I have been harbouring a little dream...  And it seems fitting on a night like this all saturated streets, clouds hanging low.  It's mid-May and Winter has finally arrived on the doorstep with a burst suitcase - soggy scarfed and woolen beanie in the eyes.  I'm very happy to see him.  We've only been friends for a short while but he is most welcome - a breath of fresh air. He's always a little bit grumpy but I think that's only because he doesn't get a chance to work his magic here. No snow to throw at snotty children.  No sleet to freeze into sheets of unforgiving ice.  He is bound to a rather limited canon of rumpled cloud cover, smatterings of rain and the odd frosted field...  He has much more creative liberty in the far reaches of North and South.  But despite his unkempt appearance and grumbling I invite him in for a pot of spiced tea and a biscuit.  He tells me all about packing up house, his arthritic fingers, his frosty relations with Summer.  I tell him to take his fish oil and that she is far too young for him: he will end up a cuckhold.  It's something he has to hear.  She's been staying out late and lending her warmth to everyone.... it's certainly no secret.  He goes quiet and sniffs.

"I would prefer not to be alone."  

"You'll never be alone.  There are too many of us who like you.  You bring comfort and closeness -"

"Late in the evenings.  In the mornings, when the sun rises."

"Are you less alone when there is only the promise that she might grace you with her presence and then, through mysterious disappearance, does not?"

"Somehow..."

"Winter.  You are a good man and maybe there is someone who might treat you as such."

He asked me whether I feared being alone.  I told him that I felt loved and cherished and had plenty of wonderful people close to me who coloured my world.  But some part of me would always be alone, always crave the simplicity of that.  He asked me whether I would choose that. I told him I had been harbouring a little dream...  Every night I would climb a hundred steps, echos keeping time.  I'd carry a lantern and watch the flying patterns of shadows dance across the walls.  Hear the squalls hurling themselves against the sandstone, panes of glass shivering, ocean ravenous.  I'd climb to a landing with a narrow wooden door. Lift the heavy latch and nudge it open... In this tiny room at the top of the world I'd reach out to touch the louvered glass globe that sat daytime dark.  Take the wooden match from the ledge, catch fire from my lantern and send the spark into the globe.  Suddenly the night sun would light up and begin to spin slowly on its axis and the ships would be kept at bay for yet another night.

He smiled as though he understood.

He started telling me a story of growing up under the Auroras, but sent himself to sleep halfway through...