Written by Ruby Saggers
Associate Creative Writing Editor
Image via Unsplash by Sandra-Beatrice Molnar
July 21st 1311
I am walking, feeling awfully childlike as I observe – take it all in. It is summer, and I am warm. This longing, yearning for that incandescent celestial body hanging above me to shine brighter than it has done all year – it is gone. Yes, I adore the beauty of it. The leaves are a gorgeous green, I could eat them! But they lack the crunch, the browning as though left to crisp atop a fire. I want to feel the corners between my toes, brushing the crumbs off as they stick to my planta pedis. Autumpne is calling to me, I desire it.
October 11th 1311
My goodness, I made it through the summer! Sweat to shiver, green to hazel, soft to crunch. The crunch hath come! It is Autumpne, and I am relieved. Footsteps feel dreadfully sly, I feel as though I am being watched – thus, I creep. The hazel crunch I so desired is flustering me, I am avoiding the lust of my husband to seek my own – a lust for something natural, something everlasting, something that I can touch and feel and sing to. The nights are lengthening, and I can feel time slipping away. I am not ready to meet my Lord and Saviour yet, not until the seasonal cycle is complete. Hasten, wynter!
February 26th 1312
Nowe is wynter comen, and my time here is expiring. I gave my husband my flesh, let him feast on it. Wynter has not been kind. I have been nibbling at the slice of brown bread Aunt Emeline made, a whole slice is rather generous! It is to last me seven days. My breath is stertorous, I must catch it in my hands and swallow it again – there is not a lot of air now, too many people spoiling the broth. The forest is beautiful, a blanket of snow and a little more still falling. It covers the droppings, the mess, the bodies. People are suffering here, and I fear I am next. My only solace is the crunch of leaves, though the crunch is a little sloshy. The leaves are few, I do not know where they went, only that somebody else now has the pleasure of treading amongst them. O, wynter! I desired you much, you have starved my people! I long for the green once more.
May 5th 1312
Today is my last. I lay here, naked, delivered in my entirety to my husband. Springen tells me that I must create, do my duty. I always believed that my duty was to love the leaves, to help them grow. Today, I am full of seed. Life is to be taken from me, as I feed him another. I pray he looks after them, I pray they grow up to feel the leaves as I had done – between their little toes, their delicate fingers. Lord, I shall meet with you when the leaves have run their course – green, to brown, to vanished, to green once more. Ich am on mine journey to thee.