A/N: This drabble started out as a little experiment in prose and style, but I really liked how it ended up, and I was assured it was good enough to publish. I hope you enjoy it.

By the time the brothers had come into their teenagehood they had long been disabused of the illusion of Spring—new life from old death with only a spattering of frost to show for it.

Oh, but Summer—long days of warmth burgeoning from tentative but tenacious life—that wonder might yet exist and it was this that they fought for, clung to, and dreamt over.

In the meanwhile they lived their lives in Autumn—golden hills, orchards of ever-changing color, things moving too fast, coming into ripeness only to fall bereft from the vine.

And Winter—cold, lonely darkness, wind crying in the night, warm arms spirited away by dawn—had been know far too well far too early, and was never, ever forgotten.

In this way the brothers walked backwards through the seasons as one might flip back through the pages of a well-read book—one more impossibility made natural to a pair of boys who had learned to remake the world before their age-mates dared to wander from beneath their mothers' skirts.