With the pleasantries over, the argument started in earnest
and February shook its small but well rounded
fist at the other eleven members
of the council and stated his intent to see equality achieved that day.
“I still don’t understand why I cannot at least be thirty days long…!”
He boomed in a winter foamed echoing voice
which shook snow from the steadfast Oak and which drifted in a flurry
on to the table carved from a fallen Willow and in which
August exclaimed a serious dislike for.
“Because my dear February”, interrupted October,
“There just aren’t enough days to go round.” October’s husky voice
betraying the depth of age that she felt as the year had yet again
taken its toll upon her health and yet who still looked radiant
as her autumn gown shimmered in the glow of a distant sun.
“I’m sorry October, I just don’t buy it. There’s seven of you
with twenty-four more hours than you deserve,
you could at least share that around fairly.”
February appealed to the five months of thirty and implored them
to see reason as the argument continued until under her breath
the normally quiet, demure, but with the unnerving ability to create
a war just for the hell of it, August purred under her breath,
“Be thankful we allow you to exist at all oh fruitless one”.
February felt the slight kick of resentment batter at his door
and knew that August, it’s southern summer twin
was going to be trouble as it sought to belittle
February’s meagre achievements and lay the blame at its door,
all the woes of a child who wished it had been an only child.
.
Sparked by August’s underhand comment, the fragile beauty of March
chipped in and with an off-hand manner that comes with one wrestling
with their own inner turmoil, said out loud what all the others were thinking.
“You only exist Solmonath because we had to acknowledge Winter.
Can you not be thankful
we gave you more days than the twenty three you should have retained?
It’s not like you are important, your only function
is to place a barrier for Humanity to get over the length
of Time that January, the regal royal upstart, holds them in
contempt and sway and punishes them for their
reckless folly at the way they gather round the dying, shell like, walking
corpse of my sister December, and my inner rage and confusion.”
February nodded conciliatory but with blood boiling in its icy veins.
“I do thank you for the time you give me, but who wouldn’t want the
chance to live one extra day, it’s only fair. You say I act as a buffer,
that, rightly, I was brought screaming into this world because
Humanity couldn’t cope with so much darkness
in which to live, Winter as an entity, has too icy a grip.
I just want to be equal with you all, I deserve equality”.
If February thought that good will and appealing to better
nature would work then the laughter that echoed round the forest
was a dismal and brutal shock.
August, the main villain of the piece, stood up and betrayed her feminine guile.
“What do you offer Solmanath, that those of us with thirty one days to our name
do not. You are not liked, respected or admired,
you offer nothing to Humanity except cold bleakness and a day
of absurd spending as they search with consumptive desire
in search of someone to spend a made-up day with?”
All but one month banged the table in support but remained unnoticed
by the more agile months.
“January is a tyrant, a King born to a widow who dies
the moment he is ushered into the world.
He is brutal, merciless, authority has no sway over him, would you take a day off
your neighbour who resents you because you were once part of him?”
August sat down and in her place, July continued,
“March perhaps, angry but with potential to change the way Humanity thinks
and who those last crucial days before the ultimate change
in direction are pivotal to the world and who ushers in April
and the gentleness
of Spring and who conceives the following year.”
“May, take a day from May, the merry month, a month in which
the beauty blooms and in which this desecrated Willow stump we sit round in anger today
grows strong and beats hard.
Myself, the month of greatness, named after a warrior and whose Ruby shade
I dwell and the lily comforts all, I shall not yield. August, with
serious questions over your sanity dear Solmanath,
good luck pulling that one off, the most loved of all of us in the North
she will not yield either.
October perhaps, well we all know that October is charming,
prone to showing her age but she offers so much as Winterfylleth
begins and the leaves catch the sunlight one last dying time,
I will defend October at all times over a runt like you.”
July sat down with a firm handshake from her sister August
and nods of approval from the other months.
Only February, shaking with defeated rage and December
sat quiet.
“My sisters”, spoke December in a voice so quiet that
cobwebs barely shook, “I have listened to the character assassination
of our young teenage boy February and all he asks is some gesture of
equality in a world that he did not fashion. I put it to you August and July
that you see him as a joke, not with terror as you do January, my child,
nor with heartfelt thanks that you do to March and the way she changes
all that is to come. I will not stand by and watch as you treat him
this way and I am moved to disagree.”
The motion could not pass without an eleven to one majority,
such is the way in nature and December, despite being frail,
dying each second she spoke and her withered arm holding
onto her ripe belly, concealed beneath the reign of skeletal black
played the ultimate card to aid Solmanath’s cause.
“I put it to you sisters, that if we do not allow this boy
some concession, some appeasement,
then winter could last long into March,
that in spite he could act against us rather than become
what he is meant to be and January will never begin to soften.”
With a smile she added, “And as a caution to you all, if Solmanath
is to become you, March, May, July, lazy August and beautiful October,
then I have to give birth to January. If this does not pass
I shall not die, I shall live on forever, for who after all,
does not ask for just one more day to breathe?”
The point was made and a year to the day since they sat down
In the clearing of the forest, a motion was passed by all,
not an extra day per year but as a sign of good faith that February
be seen as the special teenager he was and before he became
the woman that March wished for, he have one day extra every four years
in which to breathe the richness of the air, to take in
the beauty to come.”
Ian D. Hall 2015