The pockets of my autumn jacket bulged with apples, and a fisted pair of orange paws. Leaves rustled themselves and jumped from my path as I crossed the empty park, a crispy shower of yellow and red beneath bare trees in my wake. The afternoon air was already tasting like winter. And as the sun sank to west, I found a seat on the numbing concrete bench. My brother Anews had said he'd meet me after school, here.

    So much had changed. There were soldiers at my highschool, now. Armed GI's in armored vehicles patrolled the streets. And the park was abandoned today. Except for one boyferret in a team jacket and oversized jeans, of course.

    I shifted around, hunting for the notebook I always kept. And a pen. But when I had flipped to a clean sheet - more from habit than from inspiration - I read the date of the last entry. Two months ago. 9/10/2001. I hadn't had a story come to mind, since.

    I closed my eyes, rested muzzle on the paper. I wanted to write. Needed to. Just to put something down. To connect to what I used to be.

    Before.

    But nothing came, no matter how many times I tried. I felt lost - and wanted to create something. To help find me, again. But, lost, I couldn't compose anything at all, nor even come up with a thought or idea to interest and excite me.

    This wasn't writer's block. I felt as if I'd been gutted. But then, the whole world felt like that to me.

    Anews' jeep came roaring up, before I'd had a chance to sink into thoughts brown and viscous. He hopped out, light blue feline fur catching the oblique warmth of afternoon light. I popped up, hurried to meet him. He tackled me about halfway there, rolling us about on the dry, yellowed grass. I giggled, shrieked with laughter as he got on top, sat on me for a tickle.

    He found an apple, bit into it with a spraying crunch. "This your notebook?" he asked.

    I grinned up from my place on the autumn ground, cold and new and hard beneath my back. The high, bright clouds in the silent, empty sky behind Anews' head promised a colder night. A naked mortal planet exposed to space and the bold, cryonic inspection of the terrifying stars.

    I felt so small. Under Anews. Under the sky. The opaque blue illusion that was the heavens, from which could come unseen another nightmare plane, even as we sat there, laughing, in the leaves. The trip to the mall would feel so, well, random today. We'd wander a bit, talking, joking. Trying to pretend it was alright. Pretending everything was normal. And that we weren't pretending to have a good time at all.

    But then Anews bent low, kissed me. Hard.

    He tasted of sweet macintosh, anxious metal.

    "Anews!" I protested, reluctant in spite of myself, "We're in the park!" A predator humvee roared by, the vigilant turret gunner taking in shuttered suburban homes, the deserted park, on constant watch for unknown threat.

    Like boys making out on the grass, maybe. I squirmed, ineffectually.

    Anews' paw under my jacket was suddenly and persuasively warm. Anesthetic. "I know. But... why care?" There was fatal resignation on his face, in his voice. Need tried for excitement, turned to but a fleeting grasp of security.

    I grabbed his head, pulled his muzzle to my own. Hard.

    Why care?

    Winter may never come this year.