Seasons change.

"Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight." ~ Marcus Aurelius

Some time ago - what feels like so long ago now - I wrote a very short story about a young girl in Renaissance Spain who was dealing with the move she and her father were about to make. She took a walk with the old village friar and voiced her concerns.

“I don’t want to leave.” I slipped my hand into his, which was rough with age; a hand that with its companion had spent much time lifted in offering or clenched in prayer. “I love my home.”

“Yes, our village, our Colina Verde, is worthy of much love.”

Nestled atop a paradise of Spanish hills, Colina Verde was my world. How could the town to which my father and I were returning—his native town, the premio de la reina—possibly know such perfection of light in the crest of dawn, or speak to the exquisite, half-imagined dangers of the dense forest below? Would ivy drape like plaits against cool stone walls; would the women allow me to scatter yellow narcissus petals across the chapel pathway?

“I don’t want to leave,” I whispered, and my ebony hair caught the wind, and spilled over my shoulder.