North Woods

by Daniel Mason

miasmas.

extirpation.

deliberately opaque

nonpareil

Hesperides

Was this not a wassailing? Might not the apple wassail its neighbour? Might not our rites be but those copied out of Nature? What kind of offering have you left, friend? Might we all not learn to wassail, in spirit, if not with fruit, then with words or deeds?

There were of course, occasional exceptions—the rare night one might spend alone if the other were waylaid by a snowstorm, or the weeks of illness in which one, and then the other, stayed in bed. But such variance was rare. If life, as the man said, was a song, theirs was more refrain than verse. And yet to have claimed that a warm spring morning walking over earth carpeted with apple blossoms was somehow the same, substantively, spiritually, as a cold winter noon spent pruning, or a harvest evening heavy with the smell of juice and hay—this would have betrayed an ignorance not only of country life, but of the thousand seasons—of frogsong, of thunderheads, of first thaws—that hid within the canonical Four.

Japanese (?) calendar of 72 micro- seasons. Beautiful.

“I don’t believe our guest invited you,” said Mary, rising, as Alice clutched her fife and closed her eyes so not to see what happened next.

I am into redemption for Mary’s bitch ass! ESP as a ghosty.

And I do sing that Winter’s come &c.

I have no tolerance for these bits :/

ovine

No, she thought. They did not need somebody else. A squirrel joined the cardinal in his alarm. The decision simple. Once, long ago, he’d erred and then lost everything. Now he had her. Would need her in the end.

I want to kill this bish IRL

She was struck by the discrepancy in meaning the belongings presented. That death meant not only the cessation of a life, but vast worlds of significance.