The Song of Autumn

Prologue.

The season where the leaves fell was starting. It was my dad's favorite season, although I never knew why. Like every normal year, my entire family and I went to harvest those fruits and vegetables that finally grew after a long wait: apples, oranges, pumpkins... that would end up, like each time, made jelly, cakes or god knows what, recipes that my mother followed and repeated each year.

As always, I had to prepare our altar for the arrival of autumn. When I was an immature little boy, I used to hate doing it, or that's what I said, because I have to admit I've always enjoyed it even if I wanted to show I didn't.

Every solstice and equinox I'd start by telling the Guardians or whoever was listening how much I hated that my parents were so strict with me. After that, I'd speak to them about how I felt lost, how I couldn't find myself, how I felt strange in this society, how I hated myself and I'd always end up crying.

It was like a therapy session, maybe we would always talk about the same things, but it really helped me. It was the only way to let it all out. All of this stays in the past, when the twelve years old Lobo didn't know who he was, who he was going to be or what was he going to do with his life. I was just a scared teenager, a bit different to the rest of the world.

Only I would listen to the song of the waters and the forests, only I would be hypnotized by the majestuous presence of some animals, like foxes, goats, boars or ravens. Only I cared about nature and spoke to my "imaginary friends"

One of them was a deer, who always listened to me. Them and the Guardian of The Storm were the two Guardians who would always care about me the most. Only I wanted to look beyond what you can see with your eyes, and I didn't want to feel alone.

I didn't want to feel alone. I wanted to find someone who understood what other people didn't want to understand: I'm not crazy, I just feel things differently to how they perceive them.

But well, I'm going to stop talking about myself

I want to speak about my dad, he who has taught me everything. He's a forty-six years old man with hair that is red like fire, which is being slowly consumed by the gray of the ashes as years go by. His eyes are as green as the deepest forest, maybe if you got lost in them you'd find yourself in the woodland of your fantasies and most trivial fears.

Dad is also very tall, he's one meter and eighty-seven centimeters, and he's also very strong. His nose though, is kind of small, but he has one of the most beautiful smiles in the world, with the fangs of a vampire.

My dad has always been a great man, although sometimes his character can be strong when the situation is getting dangerous. One of the things I've always admired about him is his intuition. A lot of times he knows when a storm is coming, or when something is going to happen in the valley, or something related to the animals. I don't really know if it's something he was born with or he got it as time went by, but it will never stop surprising me.

He's always been a vocational man. He loves meteorology, the countryside and our garden, where we grow all the food we eat. If he didn't do something related to that one day, he wouldn't be happy that day. I consider him the wisest man I have ever known, as thanks to him, I know all the types of clouds and how to guide myself through them, the time of sowing and harvest of each fruit and vegetable, how to distinguish the animals' footprints, the trees and a lot of other things.

When autumn arrived, my mom and him would celebrate a little party for the closest people to our family, in which we would celebrate the arrival of the season with food, stories, songs... Well, another normal reunion.

Speaking about my mom, she's another wise person. Thanks to her, I learnt about the sky and the stars, to listen and look beyond what we can see, to look to our irrational side and to listen to our interior voice, which everyone calls madness, but I prefer to refer to ir as my second voice, the one I listen to when in a forest I feel the plants caressing my legs or the grass grazing my feet with little dew drops moistening them. It is then when it tells me to feel the moment as if it was unique, the one who helps me keep the balance between my human side and a simple being, a creature from the earth and the forests.