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On Seasons The oldest creatures in Faerie are not, in fact, faeries, but rather the seasons, who are ancient and who settled in this land in an age before time was kept. They are all women, or at least all choose to assume the form of women. Amongst themselves they acknowledge that winter is the oldest of them all. The essence of both the similarities and differences between Earth and Faerie are manifest in the seasons. In both lands are the seasons likewise ordered, spring being associated with birth, summer youth, autumn senescence and winter death. However, in Faerie, seasons are fallible. When they suffer an error in judgment, the repercussions of their mistakes disrupt the entirety of their sphere of influence. Snow may turn to ash, blossoms to sparks of flame, acorns to stone; falling leaves inflict a thousand open wounds on the trees thus abandoned. The ever-present vulnerability to these seasonal instabilities engenders in the residents of Faerie a set of ethics, which defy contemporary ideals of moral rectitude. 
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