Story for the Day: Four Winds

Marridon's Bannantyne region is broken up into smaller municipalities, all of them with their own unique landscape and history. The Anaruyd Family have lived in the municipality of Four Winds for many generations, a small notch in Bannantyne Valley, famed for its green pastures and extensive national gardens:

                Summer came particularly late to Four Winds this year, the Spring making itself a guest that had never run out its welcome. The long meadow, usually brushed over with wildflowers at this time of the year, withheld its floral secrets, lying dormant under the threat of the sun, the cornflower glancing demurely up at the clouds behind the tufts of high grass, the goosefoot gostering the timbre poppies, the blanket flower unfurling and hiding the flax and aster under its blushing plume. The regales of the clove and cleavers, the rue and rye, the lawnlace and bluebutton were only just coming out, and the goldenrod, usually in a flush at the height of the season, sat idly by, saving its brightest colours for later in the month, draping its subdued golden loom across the cardinal and coneflower, the burdock and borage bristling in the breeze. The wind ripped in from the northwest, bringing with it the nebulous crowd, a luff of low clouds skimming the surface of the sky, the gale granting a movement and fury to the vale, a place that might have slept under so dry a season.

                Warryn stood at the edge of the family garden, admiring the wealth of the season, the verdure untinctured by the anger of the sun. The cows grazed in the far field, carelessly whipping the blades and awns with their tails, the sheep and horses browsed in the paddock close to the house, whilst the thrush and lark exchanged songs, their nests weighed down by martens scurrying about the boughs. How glorious a prospect before her, the idle downs tumbling into the basin from above, the stream cascading down from the cliff above, dissipating into a mist, carrying on the wind and across the landscape, glazing the northern valley in a glittering dew. Behind her were the family gardens, the boxwood hedges perfectly kempt, the neat planning of the walks trimmed and pared, the reflection pool mirroring the dovecot dressed in its finest fleece, the oak and cypress garlanding the view from the tea table, furnished with the family tea set, the masoned birdbath beside, retrenched and retired from active service. 

                Here was where her mother had been used to sit and enjoy her quiet afternoon repose, before illness brought her into the bedchamber and kept her there until her death. Here, too, was where Warryck had been used to stand, rapt in consultation with their father, who was always from home in those days. Now, with Warryck gone, Elaina married, and Warryn in the capital for the greater part of the year, their father was at leisure to be at home as he liked, though there was hardly anyone there to welcome him in the warmer months. Warryn long since freed from the duties of the landed gentry, being the champion of House Wilhelm and joint Regent of Marridon with Edvin, always delighted in being in the family garden. Closed to visitors since her mother’s passing, the garden and its many planned walks fell to her command, the labyrinth, surrounding flowerbeds, and Menorial effigy under the governance of high hills, mantling crags, and natural adumbration of the pending landscape.