The Coming of Spring
There was a crack that sounded, a branch snapped in two. It happened alongside the rollicking flow of a river. The sound was telling, for it was that of a frost that had broken, sharply, suddenly and the air poured over with sunlight.
A princess stood, bathing in that sunlight.
She wanted nothing more than to hear the sound of a thousand branches snapping, for that was the kind of mood she was in; wild, destructive, filled with a kind of wonder-power invigorated by the sound of the rushing river and the sudden sun.
Thus did she tramp about the wood in which she found her patch of sunlight, bathing and snapping branches in equal measure.
And when she was diagnosed by an owl who observed her strange dance in his silent nonchalance, he found that she held in equal parts a crazed delight in the warmth of the sun and a stirring madness born by too much stillness.
In short, he called it, the coming of Spring.