Based off some old ideas that stuck with me, which have since been heavily rewritten into...this.

7. Seasonals

"Bunny," groaned Jack, "I'm dying."

"Aw, suck it up, ya wuss," replied Bunny without a trace of remorse.

"I think I'm melting."

"It's called sweat," said Bunny without looking up.

Jack, draped over the branches of a maple, did not try for more sympathy. He recognized a dead end when he met one, and besides, it would take too much effort.

"How much longer?" he grumbled.

"Any minute now." Bunny scanned the horizon. It was well into midmorning. The birdies had long since finished chirping, were now working off their annelidical energy, and a winter spirit and the bringer of spring were both sitting under a tree in the month of June. Well, one of them was under the tree, anyway. Jack was sort of dripping from the limbs.

He decided that if Bunny's promise fell through, he'd allow himself a no-holds-barred prank on the Warren.

"Tell me again why you're so fixed on meeting her," said Bunny.

"Got a couple things I want to clear up," Jack said vaguely. His heart had been fluttering all morning. If it hadn't been for the heat, he would have been bouncing around out of sheer nervousness. As it was, he sent fingers of frost creeping down the tree, but it wasn't the same.

"Cut it, mate," said Bunny, leaning away from the icy trunk. "You're gonna piss her off."

"Consider it done," answered a voice.

Jack lifted his head hopefully. Bunny jumped to his feet.

Before them, there was a shimmer of heat rising. The air wavered like a mirage. Jack blinked, and there, in front of them, was a woman in a dress as gold as dry grass, with nut-brown hair.

Head cocked to one side, she began, "I am -"

"The Summer Lady. Yeah, I know." Jack dropped from his perch. To her credit, she didn't so much as bat an eye.

"Wintersmith," she noted. "You're out of season. Is this your harebrained idea?" She addressed this last to Bunny, who wore a distinct deer-in-the-headlights expression.

"Well, uh, Lady, he was wondering if -"

Jack jumped in. "I was wondering if you knew anything. About a girl. She used to live here. It would have been a long time ago, but Bunny said you'd know..."

"A girl?" Summer Lady frowned, and not only did her brow wrinkle, but the rest of her face as well. Skin darkened, liver spots appeared, and in the space of an instant the woman had been replaced by a stooped old crone, who peered up at Jack with beady eyes. Her dress was the color of dusty leaves.

"Forget about her, boy. She gone and buried, and married and mothered and grandmothered besides. Her family's left her in the past, and so should you."

"Forget about her!?" Jack spluttered. "She was my sister! I can't just forget about her! You're my last chance. I asked Tooth, I asked North, and I finally asked Bunny, and he told me you'd know for sure!"

Bunny was ready for an emergency evacuation if it came to that. Summer might only be a part-time geezer, but like all old ladies, she knew how to hit where it hurt. Bunny wasn't interested in finding out if lightning could strike on a clear day, so he slowly sidled towards Jack, ready to grab him and run.

Thankfully, he didn't have to. Summer's features softened. She straightened up as far as her bent old back could allow, and her face spit into a massive, wrinkly grin.

"A sister, eh? Why didn't you say so? I can't be having with young men pining after some poor dead girl, but family, now - family's different. You forget your family, then you start to lose yourself, and I can't be having with that, either. How long ago, did you say?"

Carefully, Bunny let out a huge but silent sigh of relief. He edged away from the pair. If Jack wasn't in immediate danger of electrocution, no way was he staying in the splash zone, so to speak.

"About - maybe three hundred years," said Jack, taken aback by the sudden turn of events.

"Name?"

Bunny had to strain to hear his next words, and that was saying something.

"Overland."

The old woman cackled. "That does tickle my bones. I should've known." It was a while before she stopped wheezing enough to speak again. "A bit of a sad story, though. But you know that." She peered at him through those sly eyes, and Jack nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Still want to hear it? Well, here goes."

Bunny leaned in close. They had all but forgotten about him.

The first summer after (Summer Lady began) - I only saw her in the summer, due to my nature, you understand - the little Overland girl is very, very sad. Ashe misses her brother, and wishes he were there. She wishes they'd listened to their mother and been more careful. Sometimes she wishes she could jump into the water and go wherever he's gone, since they never found the body, you see - You stop that right now!

"Sorry," Muttered Jack. Without realizing it, he'd iced over a circle of grass at their feet. He hurriedly kept it from spreading any farther. Bunny saw that he was just a shade paler that usual.

"Darn kid, stay off my lawn," Summer Lady grumbled, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

Anyway. The girl. Yes, even during the summer she's quite sad. Everyone else misses her brother, too, since he was always the one who thought up what games they could play, and all the young ones had positively adored him - I would expect no less of a future Guardian.

But that's about the end of the sad part of the story.

She gets to thinking, see, and thinks, Wouldn't he be mad if he saw me moping around like a soggy loaf! He'd sure have some words to say about that. I better start shaping up, so as to not cause him any more grief.

Little by little, she remembers the games they used to play, and the jokes he used to make, which isn't very hard at all, seeing as there were so many of them. She isn't half bad at it, either. Leastaways, in the summer she's coming along nicely.

I can't speak for what happens in the winter; that's not my side of the wheel. It was probably harder for her then, in the winter, when every day looks the same as the one before, and they all look like that day. But I still see her in the summer, and after a while she's hardly sad at all.

There's not much more to tell after that. She grows up, like children do. What I said before, that were true: She marries her young man, and gets to see her children's children.

Summer paused to study Jack's face.

"She's still around here, you know. Headstone's worn almost clean, what with all that acidified rain people are putting out nowadays, but I can still show you if you'd like."

Jack was bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Yes!"

Bunny thought he'd catch a nap while they were gone. It was his down season, after all. He'd barely settled into the warm grass when he received a sharp jab to the ribs from what felt like spear-tipped boots.

"Wake up, Mad Hatter. I've a bone to pick with you."

Bunny opened his eyes and got up, not because he wanted to, but to get out of range of Summer's footwork.

"Where's the snowman?"

"Left him by himself for a while," replied Summer, "because I have what they call 'discretion,' a quality that you appear to lack by the ton."

"You owed me a favor from - "

"Consider it repaid. I just gave Mister Wintersmith his entire family history. What I want to know is, you could have told him all that yourself, so what do you have to go and drag him into high summer for?"

"I don't have - what did you call it? Right. 'Discretion.' The kid takes me as seriously as he takes a February thaw. Besides, isn't there something you need to tell him?"

Summer dealt him her best prunelike glare. "No."

"You coulda just not showed up. Frosty didn't look like he could have lasted another five minutes in this weather. So why didn't you?"

"Because - "

She hunched even more, if that was possible.

"Ditch the old lady," said Bunny. "It makes you look like a hag anyway. Relax, he's nowhere in sight."

Summer sighed, and it was like her whole body exhaled, shrinking smaller and slimmer. Layers of shawls peeled away, blown by the wind like dried corn husks. The old woman disappeared.

In her place stood a small girl, brown-haired, in an earth-brown dress. With a freckle under her eye.

"Because I like him," she said forlornly. "He has fun. He's a better Wintersmith than what was before."

"He's a good kid," agreed Bunny, "even though I'd take pretty much anyone over Old Winter. Manny's out of the picture, so the least you can do for him is give him back some family."

Thunk. Summer's boots had shrunk to fit the rest of her, but all that did was focus the force behind her kick into a more concentrated area. Bunny couldn't help it. His eyes sweated a little.

"What was that!?" he exclaimed angrily.

"Stupid Bunny," she said. "Would you bring your people back to life if you could?"

"Yes!" Bunny responded without thinking, and jumped out of the way of the incoming leather-clad missile.

"Dead people stay dead! You're supposed to know that, Mister Circle of Life! It's natural as living!"

"Death by Nightmare isn't natural!"

Ka-thunk. He wasn't fast enough this time and received a blow that would have shattered the tibia of a lesser warrior. Greaves, he thought. If I survive, I'm getting greaves.

"Spring," said Summer, an impressively murderous expression on her little-girl face, "when my turn of the wheel's over, I'm going to beat some sense into your head, and if some of what little brains you've got leaks out, well, maybe being dead is exactly the lesson you need!"

"Wha - ?" Bunny fumed. "I need a lesson? I'm not the one wearing a dead girl's face!"

"Exactly," Summer was supremely unmoved. "It's a face. I just look like her, that's all. It doesn't mean anything."

She was telling half the truth. The girl had meant nothing to Summer, but summer had been everything to the girl. And since humans can't help but shape the world to their beliefs, Summer had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame, intrigued by this small person who hated the winter so fiercely and threw herself into the opposite season with equal strength. And because belief needs someone on the receiving end, summer had changed from an it to an I.

"I can't help the way I look any more than you can change your fur. I'm not going to try and pretend to be his little sister come back from the grave.

"That," said Summer Lady, reverting back to her golden glamour, "is final."

She vanished in a puff of dust.

You could appeal to her soft spot when Summer was old, or her petulant streak as a child, but there was no changing the mind of Midsummer. At least she hadn't gone for his shins again.

Bunny felt the wind at his back and turned.

"I didn't get to tell her thank you," said Jack, staring at the place where Summer Lady had just been standing.

A different kind of story. Heads up, How Does it Feel takes place in the same fictional world as All Trades But One. Events that happen in one story may influence the other; however, you do not need to read both collections in order to enjoy them. Think of it like the connection between xxxHolic and Tsubasa.