Winter

Sometimes the hills look like fallen giants, their spines arched convulsively in death throes, now long grown over by the tall grass and trampled beneath some farmers feet.
The spine of the world, and suddenly the name makes sense, the angled mountains so sharp animals do not dare brave their slopes, the rivers wend an alternate path to avoid this geometric oddity and the sky sets itself at a crazed angle as the sun struggles to stay above the reaching hills.

Deciduous trees cling grimly to the mountainside, their roots arched in agony, the weight of the world bowing their bony fingers. They contrast sharply with the deep green hillsides and plush valleys that fall alongside these reaching giants; their pall like snow has freshly settled on their branches, all dead, all bare.

Their contorted limbs seem to whisper it with the dry rustle of their golden leaves now shed like robes and pooled between their roots.

Winter is coming.