They come, this time of year.
The Long Cold Hours.
Slowly at first, of course. Some say Summer ends at labor day, the astronomers have marked the calendars to say that it ends on the 21st day of September.
But I think....
No, that's wrong. I can feel the shift, the same way one can feel a minor earthquake, or the slightest breeze. Summer ends with September. It ceases when October starts.
When The Long Cold Hours come.
Don't be mistaken though-when winter comes, they are gone.
...Perhaps not gone, per se, so much as 'have lost definition.' When Winter slips in and blankets the world in death, they blend together into the Frozen Dark, taking with them many of the daylight hours, too. Where I live, the sun may not break through for a week, and the icy still keeps an iron grip on everything. Winter is here not in December, necessarily, but when the first snows last more than a couple of days without melting.
Neither do they come in Spring.
The Long Cold Hours, I mean.
One or two may seem to show up, but they are only a reflection, because Spring is a season of the living, just like Summer. Though they may carry the same signs, if you let your senses sink a little further in, you will find the feel to be very different, molded by the rebirth all around you.
Those Long Cold Hours.
Oh, those hours, I live for them. I live in them. They keep me alive.
What are The Long Cold Hours?
They are the hours when Night has started to arrive early, and catch us off guard. Is it dark by seven already? When did that happen? We still go out and about like it's the summer hours, staying out until the sun would have gone down months ago, so the dark slips in around us.
The long Cold Hours rarely come without wind. They still can, but here in the Northeast they almost never do. The wind brings the cold, and sometimes the rain, and sometimes even snow before it serves the silent demon that is the Winter. The storms they bring in autumn are not like the summer storms, which are Sound and Fury. The Autumn Thunder carried on those winds is different. It's brooding, bitter, but all the same not as raw as Summer's Thunder. The Autumn Thunder is reserved, so when it lashes out it's harsher, even if it's not as powerful.
Yet the storms are not The Long Cold Hours at their height.
No, though the Autumn Thunder sometimes resonates through them, The Long Cold Hours come on nights like this.
The street is empty, and it's long since dark. There's some stars overhead, but they peek between the clouds. The clouds themselves are that dull dark purple-pink-grey with hints of orange from the city and the mall and all the other big complexes, and the lights from the houses give off just enough to hint at the shape of the roads and the trees. The air is just cold enough to nip, but hasn't grown the razor fangs of winter quite yet. That rabid wolfhound is still yet a pup, and playful where it will be vicious later.
Ah, but what really makes The Long Cold Hours is the wind! Yes, the winds of fall, of change, of autumn. They don't really sing a song of their own, but instead inspire all the leaves into a whispering chorus as it sweeps them along the pavement, down from the limbs, across the lawns half-raked. They swirl and dance with the leaves, leaves from the maples, the oaks, and even the Birch and the Crabapple, too. It's like a flame with no heat, all dancing reds, yellows, oranges, browns that are gone in a second, but brush over everything in sight.
Those are the best of The Long Cold Hours, and they're where I fit in.
I can't explain it. The only other time I've felt such an inner call is in the desert, but even then, that's because my mind has room to stretch out and terrorize the air around it. All the desolation there gives my inner artists and writers and voices space to shout and be heard, to paint canvases, without having to feel they'll interrupt the scenery.
But that voice of desolation does not come close to the whispering roar of The Long Cold Hours.
Whispering roar, like the sound of a massive waterfall or thrashing rapids, far off in the distance. Like the roar of a fire, subtly cracking but secretly deafening.
The roar of the Long Cold Hours says this: "This is where you belong, young wolf. This is where you were born, and where you were raised, and where your power comes from."
...And I feel it, too. I can become smoke, let the wind carry me into crevices and between the trees and up around the chimneys and down the drains in the gutter. I can slip into the shadows, become one, and weave my way across the fields without making a sound. Should the moon catch my eye, I am feral, but not out for blood, and run with a speed I should not have. It is not the austere silence of winter, but instead a dark that welcomes those who seek it. Spring is a season of the living, as is the Summer, and Winter is the kingdom of the dead.
But Autumn, realm of The Long Cold Hours?
Autumn's for the rest of us.
-Cadejo
