The Winter

It was a cold hard winter, frost glittered on bare trees and snow blanketed the ground. The people shivered through the short, cold days, burning the wood they had gathered through spring, summer and autumn and eating all the food they had gathered and preserved. The people hated the winter, how dark and bleak it was. They hated that their supplies dwindled and that they couldn’t go swimming, running or riding. They hated the storms and blizzards, the rivers running in spate or freezing over. Winters were hard, and this one was the hardest in living memory.