The eerie golden ring Floats through the darkness like a rogue halo After the angels fell—

Pan handed me the map, And told me to use my heart as my compass As I searched for an ambient glow at the end of the succession.

I imagined that my central nervous system was being operated by thousands of tiny hearses—

Empty pine boxes in the back Yearning for a body to cradle. Have you ever noticed no one gets buried on a sunny day?

Stuck in the loop of dreary smoke screen clouds And the first snowfall of my twenty-fourth year— Driving down the backroads For me to return home in pieces anyway.

I spent more time proceeding with caution By writing yet another poem about death Than I did living the life I had left.

Racing the stretch of dash between my beginning and my end, Risking slipping on black ice—

And I lost myself to the void. Back when the sun still shined And the birds still sang And people had their hearts open and their hands closed.

I kept following the golden glow Until I found where they laid the angels to rest And I knocked on Death’s door But it was the Minotaur’s nose. He said the other side is just as cold.

It rains so hard, it turns the rain hard. Something to be used as a weapon, slick, smooth ice upon impact a crash waiting to happen like you and me

In the depths where pressures flow, Like currents in the sea’s deep glow, I swim against the tide, In a quest for grades.

Each wave a test, each current a grade, Buffeted by waves of anxiety, I’m not free. The winds of pressure push and pull, Threatening to capsize me at every turn.

Like ships in a storm, I feel the strain, Caught in the current of pressure’s domain. The pressure to excel is a riptide pulling me under, Each grade, a gust, each test, a squall, threatening to engulf, to enthrall.

For what am I without good grades to claim? Merely a ship without a compass drifting in shame. Each missed mark a tempest raging inside, threatening to engulf, to subdue with its tide.

NATIONAL WEATHER EMERGENCY:

”Fox 9 news reports of heavy hail and devil stones of fire are on the way. They are traveling 285 mph and are deadly, please get to a safe place and stay there. This is McKenzie with fox 9 news. The State of Minnesota now holds the world record for the fastest wind gust ever recorded on the surface of the Earth. Fox 9 news, McKenzie”

My mouth dropped as I turn the tv off nervous and damn near having a heart attack. ”MOM” I yelled at the top of my lungs ” did you hear what is coming our way” yea she replied with a blank scared look. Without thinking I ran out of the house jumped in my 1995 station wagon and drove to go get my little sister from 5th grade. The class wasn't over yet but I wasn't leaving my heart in a building with other little people and strangers that she hardly knew and people that she just had a name for, even if it meant that I would have to die I was going to get her. This was the same severe weather that had killed my father and left my mother with broken heart syndrome, she's never been the same since. I will not let this happen again to my family.

10 years ago:

E short for Ethica was from a city in Minnesota named St.Paul, the capital of Minnesota and the oldest city there as well. When Ethica lost her dad they were forced to move to a low-income neighborhood because her mother couldn't take care of them the way her father did by herself. Ethica’s mother was a full-time Cafeteria lady and her father was always on the road with truck driving but he made decent money to hold his family together.

This same severe storm had hit the state of Minnesota 10 years ago, it wasn't as strong as this one but it was strong. Martin was on his way back from California to spend some time with his family before he had to leave again for another month. He was 2 hours away, he made a phone call to his wife telling her that he would be there in two hours and to please have dinner prepared for him he was hungry and haven't eaten that whole morning. Doing what she was told she had dinner prepared for her husband before he got there but she had a sharp pain in her heart and something told her to call and that’s what she did.

”Sweetheart where are you”?she said the food is getting cold and you should have been here. She heard him say that he was dying and that he loved her and right there he took his last breath on that phone. She was devastated and completely changed after that.

Present:

I knew the storm was coming and I was for sure that I was going to beat it and I did on the way there but on the way back was going to be hard and it was, by the time I had carried my little sister out I saw people running being burnt and dropping dead. I ran to the car and stuffed her in there, I looked down and my foot was on fire but I couldn't feel anything. Determined to get home safely I leaned on the car with my hands and asked God to guide me home. The ignition is on drive... GO!!!

From its earliest days, the strange weather patterns that give the Mysterious East it’s name stem in large part from what became known in latter days as The Temple of Seasons in the Forgotten Heights.

When all the land was first being made, and the casts of the Ancient Elves were working with the breaking down of the World Bones to create natural law, they installed ancient technology to create weather patterns that would raise and create immense, lush forests for growing new and variegated forms of life to seed the rest of the planet with. They appointed a class of servants, genetically engineered over time, to tend to this garden of experimental plants and animals, as well as even spiritual forms. These became known as the Bronze Elves, the Forest Tenders.

In latter days, as thought forms among the old Ancient Elves changed rapidly, and new theories came into vogue to better reflect scientific facts, those older forms and newer forms meshed together in many different strands, to create underlying currents of mysticism. These influenced those Ancient Elves who owned and operated the Station, as they became an initiative order of cultists with more rigid scientific understanding following a particular doctrine of creative evolution. This new doctrine led to things becoming more and more bizarre, in terms of the forms of flora and fauna that were emerging, and the increasing chaos in the forest caused by the influx of seeding processes that created many energetic swells to develop in pockets of the wilderness in its domains.

Their control over the station became less understood over time, until the beliefs degraded further into a formalistic religion. This began to spread outwards, influencing other remote regions. They engaged in rituals of chaos and strangeness, and then seemingly unrelated events on the Southern Continent ramified out, and all the Ancient Elves at the Station disappeared, along with the rest of their kind. The old enchantments that obscured the weather control station remained active, and so the station was lost to time.

The rest of the slave class that became known as the Bronze Elves developed their own tradition, after being abandoned by their Gods. These eventually developed some level of bulwark against the chaos, and so they established Greatwood by use of a Girdle.

One small sect that did have some remembrance of this was what would later become known as the Woodreaves. As the original sect of caretakers that carried out the orders of the Ancient Elves they retained some knowledge of the lore through religious traditions. They used their religious knowledge to exert some minimal amount of control over the Weather Machine, which they called the Temple of Seasons. They even began to regulate its flow of weather through religious invocation of their own innate understanding of the Being of the forest. Thus the weather patterns began to be more controlled and less deadly in specific areas.

Thus was born different areas of the Mysterious East, as they are known today, and why the weather can be so extremely variegated, and the life so strange and wonderful.

The storm had come back and this time with triple fury.

The rain hammered mercilessly against the fragile cottage and the sea ate at the chalky cliff which surrounded the island.

“When’s Dad coming?” a small child wailed.

“Not for another day, he said he was stuck somewhere,” an older child whispered.

They sat in the cottage together, huddled by the fire. Suddenly the dark clouds tore open and a huge bolt of light slashed through the dark sky. The rain fell like stones and plundered their silence and suffocated every inch of the ground.

Then, through the haze, the older child noticed the dark figure gliding towards them, effortlessly pushing through the rain.

“Look!”

They froze in silence and waited for the inevitable knock.

“How did he get here?” whispered the younger. “Only father can get on the island.”

Thunder moaned and grumbled above them as if it yearn for some kind of melody but was silenced by its own disapproval. The knock came sooner than they anticipated and the children were brought back to their senses. The old oak door creaked open slowly but the wind soon grew inpatient and hurled it wide.

“Hello?” They calles but only the wind answered. There was no one there.

“Is he there?”

“I can’t see anyone,” said the elder. “I wouldn’t want anyone stuck out here though, not in this weather.”

“We should go look!”

They pulled on their boots and battled into the storm towards the cliffs. The rain relentlessly ravaged the landscape and slashed the children’s faces until the felt the tingling sense of pain.

Before them lay a dark shadow only recognisable as a man by his ginger hair and blue eyes, much like their own, maybe too like they’re own. Wedges in between his ribs lay a knife cursed with the dark crimson of blood.

In the darkness they searched for an answer but upon finding nothing, the followed the dead mans, gaze almost hypnotically, back to the tiny cottage. In the left hand corner they noticed a figure, hooded and dark watching them through the haze of rain and thunder.

That morning, the snow had be an unwanted obstacle, impeding upon her daily routine. The roads hadn’t yet been cleared, and sidewalks were (of course) not at all a priority. She had had to leap across the backyard, hopping in and out of the snow. She had just emptied her boots so as not to let them become filled with puddles when she realized the trek was not yet over. She wadded through knee high snow, feeling as if she were swimming above ground. When she told people she liked snow, she didn’t mean this much of it. The bus was swerving, cars were stuck, immobilized in their driveways. The snow was nothing more than a safety hazard.

Since then, it had stopped snowing. The roads had been plowed, and sidewalks (mostly) shovelled, creating mountainous snowbanks. Done work for the day and safely back home, she sat perched in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, and soothed by a steaming cup of tea.

She was suddenly struck by an unexplainable urge to be out in the snow again. She set the cup of tea down on a shelf, tossed the blanket aside, and rushed down the stairs. Quickly dressing in all the snow gear she could find, she stumbled outside into the snow and wandered into the middle of her backyard.

She stood there and looked up at the sky for a moment, and then allowed herself to fall backward, trusting the snow to catch her in its cool embrace. She closed her eyes and listened. It was late, and what few sounds there were seemed to be caught by the snow. As she lay there absorbing the silence, she thought to herself that yes, maybe when she said she liked snow, she did mean this much of it.

Fredrick could barely see a thing, the intense glare of the afternoon sun bounced off of the sheets of mirror-like ice and rendered his eyes near useless.

The feeling of touch was relatively useless as well. Sensitivity wasn’t much of an option when coated in four layers of polyester and wool. But removing that meant instant frostbite, which seemed worse than not being nimble.

Even worse than the loss of vision and feeling, was the sensation of being suffocated. Or maybe it was more like being forcefully strangled, gentle suffocation actually sounded like a relief at this point.

While he didn’t consider any of these things pleasant, they were all certainly tolerable. Well, If he had been walking down a familiar NYC street they would’ve been but he wasn’t. Frederick was navigating a precariously perched, flimsy metal bridge that spanned thirty five feet across a bottomless ice cavern. This definitely wasn’t a walk to Central Park, he was actually 23,482 feet higher than the highest point in Central Park, Frederick was attempting to climb Mount Everest.

Everest was a lifelong goal. A captivating peak that Frederick had summited countless times in his dreams, he was ecstatic to get his shot at the top. When he first arrived at basecamp his was blown away by the vivid scenery of the snow capped peak. However, his spirits were dampened during the first storm. The highest peak on earth is challenging enough in great weather, but it was life-threatening when it wasn’t. When he waited out his first storm he realizes the severity and implications of the weather and had made a promise to himself to never get caught out in it if he could help it.

As he stepped off the rickety ladder he thought to himself, “Promises are made to be broken”. His time on the mountain was running out and he decided to make a risky ascent, racing the clock he knew he could only afford to be half an hour behind schedule or be caught in a storm. So far things had gone according to plan, he wasn’t exactly comfortable, but he was making progress.

It seemed as if his risk would lead to reward until he gazed out across the skyline and saw the cloud coming in. “Shit that’s early” he thought. Frederick knew he was being faced with a potentially lethal choice , he could turn back to safety or push upwards and risk his life for a lifelong dream.

A vitally important question with countless variables was decided in just two seconds.

“Summit”

It's the cold air that I love, It's the long nights that I love. When it snows from above, It's all that I love.

The change in season, Gives me a reason. It's the turkey dinners and apple pies, Then Christmas trees and peaceful sighs.

Pajamas and movies, Gifts and cookies. They are things that I love, It's all that I love.

Winter is a time of peace, Family time and lovely feasts. Why I love it is not a mystery, But it's all that I love.

Winter is a time to be free, be happy, and bring on new feelings for the upcoming year. I rule that I follow completely is: "We don't make resolutions, we do them. Sometimes when you say it, it becomes words, not actions." Be free, be happy, and eat a tin of cookies in the warmest pajamas you got.

A night of cigarettes and ocean sand show me that life is not as complicated as it seems, life falls between the cracks and I find solice in the places I never thought I’d be. The sky shifts as friends leave however, and calm turns to a thunderstorm so violent and beautiful, I can’t tell if it’s the actuality of the the night or my turmoil brought to existence.