One: The Last Summer Wind

A warm breeze with a hint of coolness at the end. These are the types of winds one can expect from the final breaths of Summer. The humid and hot days turn pleasantly warm with the initial winter breezes blowing across the moors causing the leaves to fly and the grass to sway.

Autumn does not last long. However, this short period is enough for it to carry the profoundness of seasons as long as Winter or Summer.

It's eerie how little we notice Autumn really. Everyone is in a hustle with the new school year starting and the next college term comensceing. Everyone is fuelled up by the two months of bliss they call 'Summer break'. Everyone, except a little boy.

Rowan stood by the gargantuan tree. A trunk four meters thick with branches extending out far enough for the soil by the trunk to never be exposed to sunlight during any psrt of the day. This tree had always fascinated young Rowan. Its size was an anomaly even among the largest trees in the area. He would hear his grandfather always remark about how mountain ash trees were never supposed to be this large. Visitors to the town would never guess this tree was a mountain ash unless it were autumn, which it was.

The tree's branches were chock full of red spots shining as if they were rubies under the afternoon sun. During autumn, the mountain ash would spring out beautiful, succulent red berries the size of a small child's palm, in this case, Rowan's. Unlike the rest of the mountain ash trees in the area, whose berries were not only a fraction of the size of this particular mountain ash's, but they were also incredibley bitter. For one bizarre reason or the other, this particular mountain ash, Sweet Blood, as it became known as, had berries that were sweeter than the Honeycrisp Apple.