Gallery

The sunlight felt so comfortably warm in the cool autumn air. The summer birds were no longer fluttering around happily singing their songs of the season. Now it was the somber music of incoming winter by birds that did not migrate to sultry climates. Cool mornings now had a bite of cold—quickly melting into a satisfying warm day. Not too hot and not too cold—just right. The leaves had started to change as well, their green hues shifting into a dark red before cascading into orange and ye...

Fleur unlocked the flower shop with the same care they gave to every small thing; the key turned once, bell lifted so it wouldn’t ring too sharply, a breath taken before pushing the door just so so the hinges wouldn’t squeal. They stepped inside to the collection of scents; wet soil, clean water, peppery marigold and the green smell of crushed stems. They fiddled with the window latch so it would sit just so and l...

The chilly air clung to each breath as though the season itself wished to remind Crederia that autumn had firmly taken hold, the last hints of green clinging stubbornly to the higher branches as if refusing to yield to the inevitable change. Pockets of sunlight slipped through the canopy of leaves, their warmth fleeting and gone before Luce could even lift his head to savor it. Merchants in the market square called ou...

Finn had always believed Patalum was too quiet for thunder. The village hummed with wind through wheat, water through irrigation trenches, ladles in pumpkin soup. But thunder belonged to the coast or the mountains, not a town that smelled like warm dirt and drying herbs. Still, on that sticky afternoon when the sun lay on the fields like a wool blanket, there was thunder anyway. ...

When the Autumn King first brushed his paw over the world that week, Pinku felt it in the tips of his horns before he saw it with his eyes. A hush moved through the branches, ripples of color blooming from green and violet into ember-orange, maple-red and glittering gold. Pinku stood still beneath them and the air carried a crispness that tasted faintly of spice. A leaf detached above him with a soft pop and spiraled ...

The village had begun its slow turn from summer back into autumn studies. Wagons rattled down the lane towards Castle Lothain’s road, loaded with grain, produce and today, satchels that swung from the small backs of Crederians. On tables and porch rails, uniforms waited pressed and neatly pinned, or aggressively personalized with studs and ribbon and slogans that had to be discreetly trimmed to satisfy academy rules. The season-changing quills that came with t...