Autumn sleeps fitfully, the leaves rustling, the word fall never far from her red, red lips. She is a crackling fire nearly burnt out; a wild-eyed creature who painted her canvas with any colour that scorched. So that things would look beautiful, even as they died. She dreams of a scathing laugh, of the evergreens not even winter could touch. She dreams of a russet-coloured child awakening the trees, placing her palms on their gnarled trunks with a promise of rebirth. It might be her, but were her hands ever as soft as that? Her voice ever a whisper so lilting? A while later comes the dream of darkness, the one that winter breathed into her as she was leaving for the year, smiling his crooked smile. Here the flames she so loves are black as blood and burn inside of her, tearing open her gut until she wakes in a cold sweat. Autumn closes her eyes again. Tries to remember a time when not every dream became a nightmare, but the russet-coloured child is so far away.