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Description
A Spring Awakening and the Noise that Came With It
by RoAnna Sylver for Phoenix Online Studios

# # #

I slipped quietly into winter with a kind of resigned tolerance:
Oh, it’s this foolishness again.

Of course everything has its season, and four months ago it was my season to gracefully bow out
And let the snow fill in my footprints still in a dance pattern across the meadow.
It always looks so white and clean and silent, so monochromatic and tame - but nobody tells you what’s really going on underneath.

We’re still alive, you know. There’s still color and noise and movement.

Even if it’s time for me to drift in and out of very cold, very quiet dreams, lulled by the sound of hoofbeats over my head (because he gets so restless; he never did learn to sit still).

Time waits for no goddess. The Earth turns, and not even a lady who sees in the dark through panther eyes and walks on wolf-pad feet and smiles with pointed teeth can slow a year’s rotation. (They always paint their Mother Nature with flowers, but my tastes have always run a little more wild. Feralism is natural too, and it’s always in season.)

So I fell asleep for a long time, and let the world turn without me. But the sun comes out again, if you remember to make it happen. Time waits for no mortals either, and soon it’s my turn.

Eventually you learn it’s time to stop being polite and silent. (I learned that lesson the hard way so you don’t have to.) I break the surface. I take a step.

I reach out a hand and light comes down to meet it; it follows my finger and melts where I touch. Slowly at first. Everything happens slowly at first, a gradual fading of the ice sculptures; they morph into new watery shapes and finally disappear.

Just for fun, I do everything properly at first. Follow the tradition, increase just a few average degrees a day (nobody tells you how much mathematics go into regulating the seasons), swell the creeks and shrink the snow banks.
But I’ve never been very good at waiting, and March is just the season for change, isn’t it?

We’re doing things differently this year, now we’re tired of being quiet and waiting for the sun to come back out, winter never fades unless you make it. It won’t get better unless you make sure it does.

So we do. The slow walk turns into a dance, the tempo increases until it’s an unseasonal fever pitch and I’m throwing off icy chains and corsets that have frozen too tight and we’re bringing color and warmth back into this chilled greyscale world, because we went out silently, not even with a whimper, and there’s only way to come back in and that’s singing.

And oh, we’re singing now, and I’m anything, everything but ashamed.

Because I think it’s time we were alive for a change- We’ve been waiting long enough.

I leaped into spring with a kind of heart-and-teeth-baring scream of shameless joy: Oh, it’s my favorite time of the year!

I won’t say I’m a goddess again
(because I always was)
But it’s always right about now that I remember.

Description
A Spring Awakening and the Noise that Came With It
by RoAnna Sylver for Phoenix Online Studios

# # #

I slipped quietly into winter with a kind of resigned tolerance:
Oh, it’s this foolishness again.

Of course everything has its season, and four months ago it was my season to gracefully bow out
And let the snow fill in my footprints still in a dance pattern across the meadow.
It always looks so white and clean and silent, so monochromatic and tame - but nobody tells you what’s really going on underneath.

We’re still alive, you know. There’s still color and noise and movement.

Even if it’s time for me to drift in and out of very cold, very quiet dreams, lulled by the sound of hoofbeats over my head (because he gets so restless; he never did learn to sit still).

Time waits for no goddess. The Earth turns, and not even a lady who sees in the dark through panther eyes and walks on wolf-pad feet and smiles with pointed teeth can slow a year’s rotation. (They always paint their Mother Nature with flowers, but my tastes have always run a little more wild. Feralism is natural too, and it’s always in season.)

So I fell asleep for a long time, and let the world turn without me. But the sun comes out again, if you remember to make it happen. Time waits for no mortals either, and soon it’s my turn.

Eventually you learn it’s time to stop being polite and silent. (I learned that lesson the hard way so you don’t have to.) I break the surface. I take a step.

I reach out a hand and light comes down to meet it; it follows my finger and melts where I touch. Slowly at first. Everything happens slowly at first, a gradual fading of the ice sculptures; they morph into new watery shapes and finally disappear.

Just for fun, I do everything properly at first. Follow the tradition, increase just a few average degrees a day (nobody tells you how much mathematics go into regulating the seasons), swell the creeks and shrink the snow banks.
But I’ve never been very good at waiting, and March is just the season for change, isn’t it?

We’re doing things differently this year, now we’re tired of being quiet and waiting for the sun to come back out, winter never fades unless you make it. It won’t get better unless you make sure it does.

So we do. The slow walk turns into a dance, the tempo increases until it’s an unseasonal fever pitch and I’m throwing off icy chains and corsets that have frozen too tight and we’re bringing color and warmth back into this chilled greyscale world, because we went out silently, not even with a whimper, and there’s only way to come back in and that’s singing.

And oh, we’re singing now, and I’m anything, everything but ashamed.

Because I think it’s time we were alive for a change- We’ve been waiting long enough.

I leaped into spring with a kind of heart-and-teeth-baring scream of shameless joy: Oh, it’s my favorite time of the year!

I won’t say I’m a goddess again
(because I always was)
But it’s always right about now that I remember.