The Season of Death?

"Autumn is the season of death," she read. "It is the season where you learn to let go. And the season when you brave yourself for the terrible winter to come. A price to pay for a new beginning far far away."

"Nonsense," she scoffed. "How could anybody say that?" Wasn't it completely obvious that this was the most terrible definition she had ever heard of? She was sitting in a cafe, a pumpkin-spiced latte on her table and an old library book in her hand. She was looking outside at the huge maple trees just outside the large windows, their crispy leaves falling slowly, one by one, on the freshly-rained street.

She checked the time. Oh no. It was 2:18pm. She was exactly 3 minutes late. She had to go for an afternoon class at her university, which started in twelve minutes. She chugged down her latte, which was now perhaps as cold as an iced coffee with less ice, packed her book in her tote bag, stuck one of her earphones in her left ear, and left at once. 

It felt right, however. The way she walked, her feet pressed on the beautifully shaped leaves, making the ASMR sounds she heard in visualisation meditations. Her eyes were pressed straight ahead, but her mind was aware of every step she took, every squirrel she saw running up the trees, and every large raindrop that slipped from the space between leaves, finally finding its way to the ground.

From the time she was a young girl, she had hated the autumn. In fact, she felt as though 'fall' was the perfect name for it, because August onwards, the seasons were on quite a fall till the end of February. This was perhaps due to one of her strangest fears — the fear of change. She used to find it the most revolting, the most sickening thing on the planet. She hated her surroundings changing, hated the people around her changing. She hated anything going out of her routine or out of what was her 'normal'.

It was daunting and scary, and though she had always longed for the freedom of going far far away in a distant land where everything would be perfectly what she wanted — where she could live in a small house in Edinburgh and write to her heart's content — she was scared. And hence, of course, she feared the season of autumn. The season that anticipates the cruelty of winter. That anticipates everything going downhill.

Her favourite season had always been summer —the steady warmth of the sun, a rather great love for ice creams, light clothes and swimming. And when summer came around, she couldn't help but turn every conversation into a monologue of how glorious the heat was, how iced drinks were superior and how her aesthetic summer cottage-core Pinterest board deserved its own exhibition in the city museum. 

Two years back, however, everything changed, except perhaps her love for ice cream, which if anything, increased more as the years went by. It was all gradual, of course, with the sudden increase in the temperatures of the city she lived in, and her withdrawal from her swimming classes. This sounds like the start of an apocalypse taking place, but this writer ensures that that is fortunately not the case. For something else had happened, something so good that she couldn't help but feel like it wasn't summer that held her birthday month, rather it was autumn itself! September had claimed her as its own!

Unlike her slowly faded love for summer, falling for autumn was surprisingly quick. The first thing was her Pinterest board. She made a brownish-orangish themed Pinterest board due to her love for the colour brown (this was due to her rereading and rewatching the entire Harry Potter series, of course). The second thing that happened was that she stopped reading her fiction books. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, she had started living them. She became free in a way that she had never before — she found a path that was her very own. 

And now, as the months went by, she suddenly didn't really seem to mind drinking hot lattes and started calling them 'warm hugs' in contrast to the 'tasteless radiators' she used to call them before. In addition to this, she started baking and not just the classics like vanilla cakes and chocolate chip cookies. She baked cinnamon rolls and carrot cakes, which filled the kitchen with spice. And when winter came along, she would make blondie bars and strawberry cheesecakes, warming her home against the frosty air outside.

These were not the only changes that she had experienced in her life recently. She finally took off her dirty glasses and cleaned them. She looked in the mirror, and she loved who she saw. Not just her face or her body, but her. Who she was. Don't get this writer wrong — she loved herself before, but now...

There was a glow in her. A glow that came from within that could not be done even by the best of the foundations and highlighters. She began doing things she always wanted to do. She started working harder than before, visualising the dream she had set in her mind. She started writing again after a long writer's block (which are real by the way, she would like to add). Her fixed smile — upper teeth set on her lower lip — slowly transformed into hearty laughs and blushing chuckles.

A speeding car zoomed past, splashing heavy droplets directly in her face, getting her back to the present. She had been so lost in her own thoughts, so lost in the music playing in her ears, that she hadn't even realised she had almost reached her lecture hall. She checked her watch — exactly 2:31pm. Okay, good. She was almost on time. She took out her phone and paused the song playing — 'Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.' 

It was tradition for her to start playing her Christmas playlist almost four months before December. It was her favourite playlist. Not even her writing or reading one could take its place. How wonderful was the season of winter! She loved how everything looked so magnificent outside — the snow, the cool winds and the occasional rain. And Christmas was its miracle, always there with its warm lights and homely decorations to remind her that happiness came from the inside, not from the outside. No wonder she returned year after year to her playlist.

While she walked up the stairs to the second floor, she pulled out her phone from her pocket and wrote a quick message:

"Almost reached class. It ends at 3:30. Pick me up?"

The reply comes instantly. 

"Of course. Getting ready."

"I'll be waiting," she replied and entered the hall.

She took a seat in the second row and took out her notepad. The professor started with a recap of his last class and followed with quick definitions of topics to follow in today's lecture. Her Industrial Economics Professor was a sensible man, and with the education he had, he might have been one of the best professors in her university, if only he didn't speak in that boring, long drawl.

Today, however, her mind didn't spiral into rants about professors or endless late classes this semester; it wandered back to 3:30pm. Butterflies fluttered inside her. She was brimming with excitement, but it was a quiet sort of happiness. These seasons no longer symbolised endings; they carried new beginnings too, bringing with them a familiar laughter threading back into her life after months of being only an echo. She no longer had to wait for summer to feel warm.

It was incredible how her life had changed those two years back — for the better and forever. Something that she found interesting was how, in moments like these, she forgot all about her hardships, with the past year being the hardest of them all. It was true, her life had changed for the better, however, it did come with rejections, and though she was proud to call herself someone who loved learning new things, learning from failure was a very different genre of learning.

Her eyes made their way to the window. From the second floor, the view now consisted of tree branches, with leaves falling in the air, down, down, and down. Her eyes fixed in on one of the leaves. It was incredible how one could perceive things so differently — from others and from their own past selves. Earlier, she would have made another snark comment about how autumn was the fall of nature, especially because of leaves almost falling, almost resigning themselves to their timely death. 

Looking closely, however, she noticed that the leaf was swaying. It was swaying with the wind, left and right. It wasn't just going downwards. It seemed to fly upwards too, and perhaps when it was done, it crept down towards the ground.

She laughed quietly in disbelief. The leaf was flying.