September Prompt: The End of Summer

2. Mourn the end of long summer days

Cold weather, it turned out, was very bad for mages with magic-related blood disorders.

Arianwyn's first winter had been especially harsh for Namarast. As the daylight hours shortened, the mage city was plunged into a dark and cold winter. The ice never seemed to melt from the ground, and clouds stubbornly refused to let the sun's rays touch the frozen earth. Many days, travel outside of the home was nearly impossible between freezing rains and deep snow. That year, Arianwyn almost did not make it. Her poor circulation left her especially vulnerable to the slightest of cold drafts, and illness gripped her weak lungs. She spent the entirety of the season wrapped in thick blankets and tended to by her parents, in hopes of the weather warming enough to let her weakened body fight off the sickness that gripped her. Only when spring had ousted the worst of the winter chills could she be allowed outside, the poor mare having hardly seen the outdoors for months on end.

Even years later, winter still brought with it difficult weather for Arianwyn to suffer through. Though her health had improved with the honing of her magic, her circulation issues still meant that the cold temperature was painful, and often dangerous for the silvered mage. Each year, she mourned the loss of the warmth of summer, a deep resignation settling upon her as the days shortened and the first snow loomed. For one hoping to become a mage-protector, seasonality seemed a great shortfall, as she hated that she might be limited to work only in the warmer half of the year. And yet, she could only tolerate it, and hope her magic training might bring her relief from the cold weather. Until then, she was doomed to spend the winter indoors, hiding away from the cold. [303 words]

4. They make sure they are doing all they can to get ready for winter.

Corraine was no stranger to the dangers imposed by the winter months. As a mage of fungus, she was deeply in tune to the cycles of nature, of growth and rot. Summer was the season of abundance, when the plants thrived and biomass accumulated across fields and forest. Fall was the season of harvest and decay—a double-edged sword for the farmers, who were forced to pick their crops quickly before frost turned their bounty over to decay. For Corraine, this meant fall was when she was in the best of health, as the death of seasonal plant matter gave her fungal magic much to feed upon. However, this was all in preparation for the stillness of winter, when freeze would halt decay in its tracks, and her fungal magic would be greatly weakened.

So, Corraine prepared. She treated winter as though she might be hibernating, and prepared herself for the coming seasons when her fungal magic would weaken greatly. Self-care and preparation were important—eating well and being in peak health in fall would help stave off the worst of the winter lows, and making sure she had travelled to warmer areas where her magic had a greater chance of sustaining her gave her the best opportunities to make it through. [212 words]

1. Simply enjoy the season for what it is.

For a mare as task-oriented and focused as Spite, it seemed odd how much warm weather improved her mood. If asked, she would always explain it was basic biology—as a cold-blooded, fire-breathing lizard-mage, of course the warm weather would put a skip in her step. Her metabolism relied on the heat of the sun, so of course she would prefer summer's warmth to winter's cold, and her icy mood during the cooler months was a mere reflection of that.

Yet, the truth was deeper than mere physiology. Spite's home, renounced though it may be, was in the warmth of the jungles and swamps. She had grown up in clan lands where winters were mild and summers were humid. Her childhood was one of running through mud during the winter months, not snow. While she did not admit it openly, she mourned the loss of her childhood home, and the weather that came with it. Summer was a chance to reconnect with what she had lost. Perhaps she could no longer wander through the swampy trails or smell the Southern Jungle flora, but she could find familiar in the sweat than ran down her back, or the buzz of summer insects in her ears. So, she loved the summer, and enjoyed the warm season immensely. [215 words]