A Stolen Taste Of Spring

20260126

Written for Luna Asli Kolcu’s “Myths of Winter - Week 9” event.

Everyone thought it harmless to wish for an early spring. And usually it was.
Perhaps this time too many people wished it. Or perhaps the wishes found a more amenable ear. Or perhaps it was unrelated to wishes at all.
Regardless of the cause, the whole village woke to find sunbeams peeping through their shutters and their homes remarkably clement for this year and early hour. Rather than scramble to get fires built up they hurried to peer outside.
It didn’t look particularly different to yesterday. While snow and ice had melted, everything was still subdued and wintery. But the air felt like a late May morning.
Everyone marvelled. Rejoiced. Adults rushed to air the house out and do laundry, and children rushed to go play outside before anyone thought to nab them and set them to work. After so many months cooped up it was giddying to breathe deep of fresh air and feel strong sunlight on their skin.
Only a few fretted. And all habitual worriers, so nobody paid much heed. They ended up huddled in the smithy, peering suspiciously at the revelry outside.
“This isn’t normal.”
“What’s going on?”
“All that mud’ll freeze hard as rocks tonight, mark my words.”
But the temperature didn’t drop much. Only to spring night-time crispness. And it warmed up again once the sun returned.
Were they really getting spring in January? A miracle! Many offerings of thanks were laid before the shrine. Meanwhile the worriers in the smithy were muttering their own prayers.
Perhaps one set of prayers were heeded. Perhaps both were. Perhaps none of it mattered at all. Either way, the third day dawned bright and warm. And all around buds were opening, plants stirring in response to the unseasonable spring-ness. Children reported seeing animals in the woods who normally would be sleeping for months yet. People started planning the spring festival.
Then night fell, and the temperature plummeted with it. Slumber was disrupted across the village as people had to get up to once again shut everything tight against the icy wind, and many couldn’t get back to sleep. Too busy fretting.
Mud had frozen hard as stone. Worse, the fresh tender buds were wrecked by frost. Would the trees recover? What of the overwinter crops, which had started to grow and now were rimed and starved of sunlight?
“Reckon there’ll be a lot of hungry beasts sniffing around soon.” The hunter predicted. “Won’t be able to get back to hibernating, and their reserves won’t last long moving around.”
People felt much the same. They’d been settled in to their winter state, and after those three days of freedom being stuck inside chafed unbearably. Children fidgeted and fussed and squabbled, and adults were too grumpy to resolve matters properly.
To make matters worse, stores which had been comfortable to see them to the end of winter were nowhere near enough to also handle a hungry spring. It would be tight belts from now until the true warmth came. And who knew when that would be?
Many were the eyes boring worried holes into dark ceilings that night.
However, fretting can only hold out so long against exhaustion; eventually everyone had fallen asleep.
And they dreamed. Everyone. All found themselves dreaming of walking out of their home to find the shrine shimmering a bright, gleeful green, and hearing a voice whisper from inside. “If you want the warmth back, I want more presents.”
Of course on waking nobody assumed it was true. But, it having been so vivid, and particularly since children were eager to tell everyone about what they'd dreamed, and it was so very similar to what the adults remembered, soon the whole village had cross-referenced the message.
“Don’t do it,” many warned, “as things are now, they might settle back to normal. The longer the warmth lasts the worse it’ll be if the cold comes back. And who knows what that thing is, or what it might be asking for before the real spring arrives?”
But they were habitual worriers. So nobody paid much heed.

Prompt was “Three days of warmth in the dead of winter. Snow melting. Ice cracking. Everyone celebrating. Then the cold returns—harder than before. And everything that thawed is now exposed.”