The mountain rumbles.


Try as he might to seem normal, there is somehow a falseness in his company; not quite as... playful, unless with strangers. Slight slowness, as if he's forgotten what to do and how to be. The situation he has found himself in has already begun to bore deep into psyche - it is all he can think about, more so than before when he was in the most danger. But perhaps that is the problem.
He doesn't know whether he is in danger or not.
He doesn't know if his actions are to safeguard his life anymore.

Helping Autumn was strange somehow; it all seemed so innocent, as if from one of the fairy-tales he knew. Yet, just the year before, she was trying to kill him. It angered him that even more was expected of him now, now that he had this promise due to his mistake. Summer was turned Brother into his one sin, and he understands that he must put things right in order to appease the Gods and give them back the servants whom the forest rely on.

He called them wolves once. But now, driving his promise home, he selfishly is the one beginning to seek them out, revenge-driven behind an act of "help". Helping himself, perhaps.
This is no longer about my loyalty to the forest.
Iaurdagnire took a bite out of what he thought would be his freedom, but was deceived. He therefore prowls, ravenous for the next as the desire for simplicity and a quiet existence gnaws at his being. It should have ended. Everything.
Why am... I.

The snow has come late and the flurries last for days without covering the ground.
Winter is not succeeding.



Thus, his hunt for Winter begins.
The giant wanders the forest and takes note of every change in the wind, every rustle in the ferns and lingers in the coldest frost-bitten clearings. He is also particularly sensitive to any disturbances in his antlers due to their last encounter, but nothing was out of the ordinary except for the unusually long duration of snowfall.
Ah...
Iaurdagnire's eyes were opened to what he was looking for. The snow was trying hard - too hard - and surely the closer proximity to the Spirit, the more snow he should see.

It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. A small but pleasant area that was seclusive despite being open, and above all it was aesthetically pleasing. Dag remembers Winter's greed, and it didn't surprise him that a certain amount of vanity could be seen along with it.

"Winter... 'Dear Winter', I know you are here."
His deep, lustrous voice cooed, spouting soft gentle mists that he made deliberately prominent in attempt to lure him. As he recalled, Winter took the form of an Elk and ran as the wind. Surely he wouldn't tolerate such a blatant intrusion into his airspace?
Hardly pausing for breath, Dag sounds a long and territorial roar as the ultimate taunt; a billowing tower of claim rises above him in reflection of his patience. Intentional or not, it was Dag who had a certain level of control over them now.
It is within my right to demand their presence in the boundary of my duty.
He drew breath for another call, but didn't expect it to be stifled in a startled choke as the flash of another rushes past him.

"You've gone..." Dag's eyes regarded where the image pounced with a great intensity,
"Do your lazy snowflakes reflect your weakness?"
"Perhaps." Came an absent reply as specks of hail around Dag's ankles were dragged up by a half-hearted wind, "I know you are here to make sure I mark my end. But what if I refuse your help?"
"You won't," Dag's voice growled, "you were the first to come for me, and even when you failed you came back pretending to be a friend. Why?"
A long silence passes, and the temperature drops. Yet, the snow falls less heavily.
"Luck."
Another silence. There was no time for games or the benign social interlude that would require Dag to ask him to expand his statement.
"Your previous life. It was I who took it, without prior planning. Over-population... called for a bitterly cold winter. You were the one who imparted that observational knowledge to us, and my resulting blizzards took you along with many others. I fear that is what made me come back to you, to see if I could take your life again with purpose."
Dag's entire face was clenched, and his body was frighteningly solid. A sharp crack sounded with the slip of his teeth under the pressure of his jaws. He stared into nothingness, statuesque, with a mixture of rage and anticipation thundering in his heart. He remembered and knew nothing of how he came to be. What made him, him. The middle pieces were already there; a grand, but incomplete picture of himself. But the corners, the clearly cut edges - they are and have always been missing. The reason Dag was so adamant of an existence where he simply is, where he can simply be, is because he has no justification for who he is. Origin, upbringing. Everyone knows you build a puzzle from the outside inwards - those edges are the easiest to find and are the foundations set in order for you to succeed. Knowing where you are coming from is a part of where you are going.
You try starting a jigsaw from the middle.

"So you wished to avoid me this time?"
"Not avoidance." Came a blunt rebuttal, "We don't like being interfered with... do we, Iaurdagnire."
Dag sneered at Winter's remark. 'We' indeed.
"Though I refused you all for a long time, that does not mean I still believe that you have shaped yourselves around me. Tch, you all look nothing like me for one."
"There was nothing to suggest that we must look like you, or act like you."
Winter fell for Dag's baiting. His higher-than-thou attitude - though expected from a demi-omnipotent - lacked a certain supreme prominence that his siblings carried off far better. Jealousy was never without a point-proving argument to confirm it.
"If your species were so great, why did none of them survive? I took the form of the strongest evolution of your kind which still roamed, in greater numbers and greater forms throughout your existence."
"Ah, how very clever you are, dear Winter..."
A path had been cleared for the information Dag wished for.
"Then, what of Autumn? She is female."
"She chose the form of your Mothers." Winter replied almost instantly.
"Mothers..." Dag shook his head. That was another question for another time... but he had had Mothers, perhaps not in this life, but the others.
"The ferocity that is Spring... What is he..."
"Your enemies."
The once confident giant took a step backwards, and his throat became dry; it all made an astonishing amount of sense. There was just one season left that rushed from his throat.
"... Summer."
The snow had almost gone, and Winter appeared again. He had gathered all the energy he had left, but came to be no bigger than Dag's hoof. Winter had shrunk in his efforts to defy the inevitable.
"Summer... took the form of a friend. It is why he is- was, almost mortal like you. What he always took from you above all else were your friendships."

It took a long time for Dag to digest and process what Winter had divulged about them. However, it didn't effect him as much as should have been expected. Surely it only lay the brickwork for more questions - the exacts of all they had been through with him. But all the while there was this one word Winter had said before it all: purpose. That word is what he concentrated on as he looked down upon the season who weakened still. He stared. Watching him shrink beneath him.



Dag leaned down as far as he could without risking being toppled by his antlers just to see if he could look into Winter's face. But he couldn't - the Spirit flashed in and out of view like white noise and made feeble attempts to start up the snow again. Out of the four, Winter was the first to make his spirit known and was therefore the most feared at the time. In truth, Dag relished in seeing him suffer. What Autumn had put him through had been far worse, yet somehow he could not have felt this angry toward her.
Winter was the one who started it all.

"There is a tiredness in me that I cannot blame on the lethargy you bring. I am tired of knowing, tired of chasing what must be the end only to be decieved and be expected to continue. I will help you in order for myself to seek Spring; my promise will stand even though my duty to you is void."



Dag snorted. It was a mere technicality that he had sworn to the Gods an indirect allegiance to the success of their.... property. They were hardly in the equation at all.
"Regardless of whom my service belongs to, it is imperative you move from the forest quickly... lest my efforts thus far are to be squandered because of your foolish efforts."
Winter shuffled its way forward,
"I am stubborn, like you."
"There is no comparison to be made." Dag barked back, frustrated, and to fully show the severity of the situation he even went so far as to slam his hoof down directly on the infinitesimal speck of white. Winter parted on impact into a fine dust, like a snowball colliding into a wall. When Dag removed his hoof, the tiny image of an Elk materialized again.
"Why did you do that? It was unpleasant... and uncalled for."
"My patience is wearing thin."
"What made you do sure it wouldn't harm me?"
Dag raised a brow,
"You are not mortal. Pain and death isn't in your physical vocabulary now, is it?"
"Not mine, yes," there was a pause, "but it is in what I control."
"Finally." Dag rolled his eyes and sat down on the cool grass.

"My mild weather can last a lifetime without making any real difference to the flow of life... but there needs to be at least one point where lives must be lost to me. A price for being weak, an inevitability for the aged, a release for the sick and injured. Plants must die in my frost for others to live, and not forgetting the Winter fruits and berries that cannot feed the strong without my bidding. Though I have brought snow many times this year, I cannot cover and freeze the ground, and I cannot summon my frostbite winds. I am simply... too small as I stand."
Dag nodded along to Winter's explanation, but his nods lost momentum and slowed as he could see the pint-sized spirit... eying him, almost.
"Too... small."
Winter nodded and stared at him.
"And you are...?"
Dag stood up immediately and shook his head,
"You can think again!"
"Listen to me, all those fairytale stories about deer becoming possessed by demons and all the rest. I can make that happen, properly."
"Possess?!"
"Not exactly... More... 'Borrowing'. I simply... borrow your body, and use your strength to do what I have to do."
"Borrow? What do you... how... What?"
A cacophony of words and sounds came from Dag in attempts to understand. What would you say to such a notion?
"Hypothetically, hypothetically... what would happen to me in this scenario? Would I attain your... "powers", or whatever they are. Abilities, in order to do this?"
Winter tilted his head sideways, one eye squinting with the corner of his mouth slightly open,
"Not exactly... I think the best way to explain is to show you."
The last thing Dag saw was the split second change in Winter's expression to that of wide-eyed concentration and inner satisfaction of what he was about to do-
- Had done.

All of a sudden Dag reared and stumbled around uncontrollably, grunting and having a hard time balancing his antlers.
What's happening to me? "Nothing. I'm just getting used to things."
I'm not... w-what are doing, how are you doing this? "Like I said - I'm borrowing your body. Think of yourself as... a conscience, for now. A voice only I can hear."
It was like having an outer-body experience, except you were still very much inside yourself looking and feeling as normal. Yet, you could not control where your eyes look. Could not control how your body moved, whether your walked or ran, and strangest of all could not control what came out of your mouth. Though everything was still felt. When Winter spoke, Dag could feel his mouth moving. He could feel whatever was dictated by Winter.
And that was frightening.
"This is fantastic..." For you perhaps. Please... Just do what you have to do.

Once Winter had mastered the basic motor skills to transport his new bulk around the forest, he ran, working up a gallop before finally being able to encourage his blizzard winds and bring the snow with him. Just under the howl of the storm, Dag felt a distinct 'woo-hoo' be thrown about, and his body rocked with the jumping nod of his head. Winter was feeling what it was truly like to be alive... and even when the snow had fallen, landscape frozen, the legs he had taken still thundered.

"Iaurdagnire... do you feel? Can you see why we are so jealous of you?" You have done what was needed...
"To feel my snow... to breathe, the smells-ah... ah? Ahhh... the pain of a wound." It must be cold to irritate my scar... well done, you have succeeded in your final flourish. Spring can come now.
"I am not finished yet." Yes you are, Winter. Spring is just days away, you need to leave.

Give me back control. Now.