Reason for the Seasons by Johnny Ostentatious
Spring stepped onto the rectangular playing field. He was the first one here. He stood in his corner.
When attending these yearly matches, Spring—unlike his three siblings: Fall, Winter and Summer—assumed the form of an Earthly male. His parents had given him this form because he was the favorite season of mortals.
Spring was psyching himself up for the match when his partner, his sister, Fall, arrived in her corner. Fall assumed a humanoid form for these contests, but nothing Earthlings would’ve recognized. Her legs were made of thin tree trunks; her arms, boughs; and her fingers and toes, twigs. Colorful leaves made up her torso and head. For eyes, she had blueberries, both of which were brighter than the suns of Nadeev. For a mouth, two leaf stems comprised her lips, and her tongue consisted of three rose petals laced together.
"How are you?" Spring asked.
"Fine," Fall said. "Yourself?"
"I’ll be better once we get this over and done with."
"It’ll be over before you know it."
"Promise?"
"With my hand on the Shroud of Turin," Fall said, smirking.
Spring smiled. A joke between them concerned Jesus Christ. Spring couldn’t believe mortals still thought Jesus was the son of God. How preposterous! Every entity in the universe knew that Jesus had been a scholar sent from the planet Zagar to inject some morality into the barbaric human race.
The smirk and smile dropped from Spring and Fall’s faces. Their opponents arrived.
* * *
Summer appeared first. He rolled into his corner. Summer didn’t assume a humanoid form. He was literally a ball of fire. Flames rose off his exterior, similar to what happens on the sun.
"What’s up, fuckers?" Summer said in his gravelly voice.
"Nothing much, potty mouth," Spring said. "Just out for a nonlinear stroll through the Milky Way."
"You’re a fuckin pissing riot, Spring. Who writes your stuff, Thalia?"
"No, I don’t need anyone to write my jokes, unlike some seasons I know."
Summer scowled, his face a faint imprint of flames and wisps of smoke.
Their exchange was interrupted by the materialization of Winter. She perched herself in the open corner of the rectangular playing field, across from her partner, Summer.
For these annual matches, Winter took the shape of a five-foot-high icicle. She was pointy at the ends and bulky in the middle.
"Greetings, everyone," Winter said, steam exiting her mouth.
"So," Summer said to Winter, "what do you think? Are we going to show these two cunts"—motioning at Spring and Fall—"who the reigning seasons this year are going to be?"
Winter shivered. "I wish you would not use such commoner language in my presence."
Summer gave Winter a dirty look, as if to say, Don’t you look down on me!
Spring shook his head. It had always amazed him how Summer and Winter were opposite but inseparable. Spring and Fall palled around a lot, but they had similar agreeable, affable personalities. Spring and Summer, however, were always quarreling. It was the epitome of a dysfunctional relationship. Nonetheless, every year they teamed up for this contest. Spring found it interesting that a millenium ago Summer and Winter campaigned for this annual match and insisted on having it in teams of two. They could have easily demanded that the match pit them all against each other, but Spring was glad they didn’t. He’d feel bad fighting his sister Fall.
* * *
The rectangular playing field that the four seasons stood on was a translucent plane that floated through outer space. Currently, it coasted past Jupiter.
"OK, you mortal-friendly shitheads," Summer said, "prepare to be pulverized."
A fiery arm emerged from his side. Simultaneously, a fireball—the size of a baseball—popped out of the top of Summer’s head. The fireball descended. Summer caught it with his hand and threw it, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
The fireball flew towards Spring. He ducked, the fireball sailing past his ear, sounding like a lightsaber. (It was hot, too.) The fireball bounced off the edge of the translucent plane and evaporated into outer space.
Fall stepped forward. She extended her arms, palms up. Vines shot out from the center of her palms. They stretched across the plane like two thick strands of a spider web. The vines encircled Summer in a crisscross pattern. Fall placed the vines far enough away from Summer so that his heat wouldn’t disintegrate them. Summer cursed and worked on cutting through the two vines. Fall shot out two more vines to encircle Summer.
"Oh no, you don’t," Winter said. She spun to the center of the playing field. She moved at 300 revolutions per minute. This whipped up wind currents that snapped Fall’s vines.
"Knock it off," Summer screamed, "knock it the fuck off! You’re blowing out my goddamned flames!"
Winter stopped spinning. "Sorry."
With Winter and Summer distracted, Spring winked at Fall. Fall nodded.
Spring did a back flip, off the playing field, a.k.a. the translucent plane. On his descent, he reached for the edge of the plane. With all his strength, he tugged at the plane, as if it were a rug. The tug had the intended effect. A ripple ripped across the plane. The ripple started at Spring and Fall’s side and zipped across to Winter and Summer’s side. Since Spring had warned Fall of what he was going to do, she jumped when the ripple passed under her feet. Winter and Summer, however, were taken by surprise. Winter toppled over, her icicle form clanging on the plane because she had no arms. But Summer wasn’t so lucky. He was still untangling himself from Fall’s vines. The ripple sent him flying off the plane. He descended, shouting a stream of expletives, his fire diminishing.
Winter bent over, looking through the translucent plane until her partner was no longer visible. The plane passed Saturn.
Winter shook with rage, her pointy end tapping against the playing field in a staccato manner, sounding like the clock of a ticking time bomb.
"It’s not fair," Winter cried. "That was too short. I demand a rematch!"
"Now, now," said a sonorous voice off the side of the playing field.
Stepping onto the plane were the seasons’s parents, Father Time and Mother Nature.
"You know the rules," Father Time said.
"But—but," Winter said, "he tricked us." The top of her icicle pointed at Spring. "We didn’t know he was going to do that."
"Now, now," Father Time said, "that’s the way the game works. Don’t be a sore loser."
"Listen to your father, Winter," Mother Nature said. "Besides, there’s always next year." She snapped her fingers. Summer appeared in the corner he had fallen off of. He was unscathed.
"Rotten, dirty, sneaky, motherf—"
"Language!" Mother Nature said to Summer. He quit mumbling.
"Now," Father Time said, clapping together his hands made of minute and second hands, "that decides it. Spring and Fall shall be the reigning seasons this year on Earth. Winter and Summer, you must be mild. No blizzards or heat waves. Are we clear?"
Winter and Summer grumbled. Fall beamed at Spring. Spring grinned. He planned on giving Earthlings pleasant weather with only enough rain to prevent droughts.
"Now," Father Time said, "who’s up for traveling on over to the fifth dimension? I hear a new restaurant just opened, the Celestial Tavern. The food there is supposed to be out of this world."
[[END]]