inter had robbed the trees of their greenery with its cold talons, and
naught but the skeletal branches remained to scrape against the frigid
sky. An air of fatalistic acceptance dominated those who worked their
labourious way through their days under those branches and that sky; life
slowed as the year itself began to die.Bursts of speed would occasionally manifest themselves, this is to be sure, but these were merely of a predatory nature. A fox or a housecat would pounce on an unsuspecting quarry; a hawk or owl would swoop down from on high to procure for itself a dinner. People -- whose needs as such were primarily met -- tended not towards such displays, and those whose needs were not met (in the most dire of ways) were so dispirited that lethargy overtook them where they slumped or huddled against buildings.
As the days ticked towards the final hour of the year, a few of the more perceptive began to notice something unusual in the air -- a condensation, if you will. It almost seemed like rain, at first, causing the street vendors to prop up their wide umbrellas over their stalls so that their wares would not get unduly water damaged. But no -- it was more as if the air were dripping, not as if it were the clean dousing of rain.
This persisted for a few days, and then seemed ever so slightly to increase. And still, it felt more as if the world had become encased in a mammoth cavern, and that the stalactites -- invisibe as they were, so high were they -- were dripping some subterranean run off down upon the cave floor, more than it felt like rain. Yet, consternation, where it indeed showed itself at all, was quickly quelled, and the lugubrious pace of life continued, a patient wait for some unknown future.
A small few, who still cherished the outdoors, noted idly the decline in foxes and raccoons from their common vistas, and decided that they must be in disagreement with this new kind of wet weather, and decided to hole up until its passing. People -- ever adaptable -- refused to let these new developments deter them from their appointed rounds, and within short order, nobody even remarked upon it anymore.
And thus the cycle went, with each new notching up of the odd precipitation, the acceptance notched up with it, and the year grew older and older.
And the new year arose, not phoenix-like out of the ashes of the old, but
out of the slow deluge which was suddenly unleashed upon the lands, and
even as they were washed away in the rising flood, everyone refused to
acknowledge that something was, at long last, dreadfully, terribly,
horribly wrong.
G7(8)