November
Here it was where the world ended. Autumn finally gave way, submitted before the heavy nights of winter came crashing down. Living breath steamed into a useless cloud that dispersed away. Frost crept over the ground and made way for the reign of cold. Snow and ice would follow, someday soon. The last stand of autumn had not gone unnoticed.
The blue gryphon sat motionless at the end of the meadow. Only his chest heaved and with each breath rose a wisp of steam only to fade. The lonely poet was mesmerized. Here he witnessed how autumn escaped from the ominous tide of wintertime. Soon the land would rest beneath a blanket of white. But not yet. Now was the time of the last struggles, when autumn had left and winter had not yet arrived. He could remember seeing the land suffocate before it was allowed rest underneath snow. Last year it had taken so long, this battle. Autumn did not wish to give way so easily. But here, now, it had passed away like a cloud of smoke disappearing into a gale.
Frost scrambled desperately at his feet, unable to conquer the warm blooded creature. Icaros sighed, not really sure whether he should be happy that the cold could not pull him down to the ground and let him rest. Rest would now bring so much relief. His thoughts were racing and there was no calm. No words would rain down on the poet as he wished, none of his writing reached his hopes. So, yet again, he was here without the quill and parchment, just on his own. Maybe relief would come and his thoughts would settle.
The thoughts would not settle. They spread their words in heaps, tore asunder great sentences and would not hold still, so that only the useless thoughts remained. With difficulty, Icaros heaved himself up. The cold had crept into his body and nestled into his muscles. It took a while from them to warm, until then the poet's steps were short, stiff and uncertain.
The edge of the forest, the first trees, loomed over him defensively. In the distance they huddled together against this lawless time between seasons. One of the guardian trees was a great oak, the branches of which spread in a proud, and vain, attempt to block out the sky. But now the limbs of the great were bare and only served a hollow mockery of his purpose. All of his leaves were in a useless pile at his feet. No matter how strong he was, Icaros pondered as he picked up a handful of the old oak's leaves, even the strongest could not forgo their habits. The gryphon toyed with the leaves in his agile talons. They slid over the scaly skin, still moist from autumn's last rains. Even though the others fell, one remained plastered onto the muse's hand and he could not get it to drop until he used his other hand for assistance. Even then the only leaf held on for dear life until being discarded.
A moment's pondering ceased the meandering poet. He looked over his shoulder to the meadow. It was at peace. Only an orb of light shone in the darkness, the dragon's fire ball. Ruubenev himself was dancing on the meadow, so lightly his paws would land against the grass and effortlessly he would rise into the air, suspended in a delirium of his own, floating weightlessly for moments until his whim guided him to the ground again. The leaps and bounds of the dragon were an odd show of grace and elegance from the creature. His mane and whiskers trailed behind him, as did the whole serpentine body, just following without question every notion of direction he could think of. He spiraled up higher and turned his stomach to the stars in a loop that slowly brought him closer to the ground. His paws only touched the very tips of the blades of fading grass and he was up again, rising straight through the circle the rest of his body was still in.
Icaros watched in awe of the wonder of what the dragon did. No one knew why the insane creature did it and only so few gave it the admiration it deserved. No one wished to come outside this late to see beauty. They did not care for it like Icaros did. They had their friends inside, they had warmth and comfort. Neither Icaros could find. The lonely muse sighed and on a whim headed deeper into the forest. The onslaught of winter was further here. The frozen moss crackled underneath his feet.
Here the poet could not find the regret of being wingless. Amidst the trunks of the high trees, no one could fly. Here he felt useful, in some strange way. But when his gaze travelled up, the gryphon realized that he could not climb. The tree branches reached endlessly towards one another in an unsolvable maze. How could one traverse such paths?
The poet was bound to the ground forever. Only his dreams might soar, but he could not fly nor climb after them. And so, as each dream slowly reached higher and higher, they all rose out of his grasp and faded into the distance. None of his hopes were forgotten, all were just lost.
Movement made him turn his head, the heavy crest knocking into bushes noisily. What he had seen did not stop despite the racket. The autumn lords, mighty spirits of hunting stags, ran fleet of foot. They ran and disappeared, faded, like so many others. The cold tightened its grip.
As Icaros returned to the very edge of the forest, a beautiful stream of uninterrupted words came raining down.