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Fairy Tale

Where the Seasons Went

Spring is six weeks late in Bellweather. Snow sits on the lambing fields, the river is locked under ice, and the church tulips have given up. Then a brass key taller than a cart turns up in a farmer's turnip patch. It belongs to the giant who keeps the seasons in four rooms at the top of Mount Pella, and he wants it back before sunset. The trouble is that the key was stolen for a reason. Someone has locked Spring from the inside, the giant's pockets are full of tiny villages he forgot he was carrying, and every turn of the key wakes something behind a different door. To thaw Bellweather, you must climb a walking giant, enter the house above the clouds, and learn which season has been waiting longest to escape.

Inside this tale

Choose where the story begins

Each opening starts in the same world at a different moment. Pick the pressure point that interests you, then decide what your character does.

Opening 1

The Key in the Turnips

The key takes eight people and a mule to drag out of the turnip patch. It is brass, green around the teeth, and longer than the farmer's cart. When the locksmith strikes it with a hammer, every icicle in Bellweather rings the same note. A message is tied through the bow with rope thick as your wrist: PLEASE RETURN BEFORE SUNSET. Underneath, in much smaller writing, someone has added: DO NOT LET HIM USE IT. You are still deciding which warning worries you more when the mountain stands up. Snow pours from its shoulders. Two enormous eyes open above the tree line, and the giant begins walking toward town.

Opening 2

A Giant at the Gate

The giant kneels outside Bellweather because one foot would cover the market square. Up close, he looks less like a monster and more like a tired old traveler who has misplaced something important again. Moss grows in his beard. A weather vane sticks from one coat pocket. From another comes the muffled ringing of a village bell. He asks for his spare key. His voice shakes snow off every roof in town. When you show him the smaller warning, he reads it twice and goes very still. That is my daughter's hand, he says. She has been missing since the first snow. Then a fist pounds once from inside his coat.

Opening 3

The House Above the Clouds

There is a ladder sewn into the giant's sleeve for chimney sweeps, messengers, and the occasional doctor. You climb past buttons the size of millstones and pockets deep enough to have weather. Halfway up, you find a whole abandoned hamlet caught in the lining, its empty cottages wrapped in lint and old leaves. The giant swears he has never seen it before. The brass key on your rope grows warm as the clouds close around you. Above, a crooked house sits between his shoulders, four painted doors set into its chimney: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and one with the name scratched away. Something behind the blank door whispers your name in a voice like rain on thawing soil.

Opening 4

Spring's Locked Room

Spring's room is locked from both sides. Roots have grown through the keyhole and wrapped around the hinges. Behind the door, the giant's daughter argues with someone who sounds exactly like the river in flood. She stole the spare key to keep her father from opening Winter again, but she did not expect Spring to lock her in. Below the house, sunset turns the clouds pink. In Bellweather, another night of hard frost is beginning. The giant holds the brass key between two fingers and waits for you to tell him which way to turn it. The roots tighten. Three other doors knock in answer. Whatever comes out first will decide more than the weather.

Playable roles

Whose choices will you make?

The role changes what you know, who trusts you, and what is at stake when the tale opens.

Nessa Tallow

she/her

Nessa is Bellweather's locksmith apprentice, better at listening to a lock than obeying the guild masters who say a key that large is not her problem. Her family's sheep will not survive another week of snow. She wants Spring opened quickly, but the warning on the key suggests the season doors were locked to protect someone.

Appearance

Nessa is 18, broad-faced and strong-armed, with copper-brown skin and thick black hair in two wool-wrapped braids. She wears a mustard vest over a patched blue dress, a belt of tiny locksmith's tools, and brass filings glitter on her cuffs.

Boro

he/him

Boro has kept the four seasons moving for so long that villages have grown, vanished, and sometimes remained forgotten in his pockets. He is gentle, absent-minded, and terrified that his missing daughter locked Spring away because she no longer trusts him with the keys. Playing as Boro means solving a human-sized crisis with hands too large for most of it.

Appearance

Boro is an elderly giant with a long felted gray-brown beard full of moss, small trees, and one nesting bluebird. He wears a russet patchwork coat with wooden buttons as wide as tables and carries snow clouds around his shoulders.

Ivo Finch

they/them

Ivo tends the village bees and is the only person in Bellweather reckless enough to have climbed the sleeping giant before. The late spring has left the hives starving, and Ivo believes the giant's daughter tried to help before becoming trapped. They know the route up Boro's coat, but the abandoned village in his pocket includes a house that carries their own family mark.

Appearance

Ivo is 14, lanky and brown-skinned, with a shaved head under a red knitted cap and bright hazel eyes. They wear a sheepskin jacket, rope harness, and wooden climbing pegs; a small wicker bee skep is strapped to their back for warmth.

The rest is not prewritten

These openings establish the place, people, and immediate problem. Once you begin, the Storyteller responds to your choices and carries the consequences forward. There is no fixed menu of actions and no single correct ending.

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