ArranTheGreat

It was near dusk, another stifling summer evening, in the late reaches of June. Crickets chirped in the brambly bushes that lined the long, rutted lane that ran across the highlands. The sun was low in the sky, casting deep shadows upon the grass, and lighting the clouds a million shades of pink, orange and red. Skylarks fluttered high on the thermals, warming their wings in the heat of the setting sun, and thrushes perched in tall, leafy trees, singing their hearts out. The shimmering lochan on our left caught the reflection of the sky as it burnt with colour, turning the tranquil waters a deep crimson hue, yet despite the sanguine sheen of

The wind blows cold through the thick, leafy branches of the pine trees, knocking great mounds of snow to the ground. It whistles around the shivering stumps of the clearing, and leaves sweeping patterns in the frost-blanketed floor, only to whisk them away again in a new, fragile decoration above the frozen earth. Half a mile away, in a different part of the same forest, stands a crumbling stone castle, broken down over the centuries by constant frost and the creeping tendrils of inquisitive fungi that have taken up residence in the disintegrating walls. There are few windows in the ancient abode, and what few there are are thin and unfriend