The wind changed first.

Not warmth exactly—Altdorf rarely offered that so early in the year—but movement. The heavy winter air that had sat over the city like a damp blanket finally began to drift away.

Sean noticed it immediately.

He was leaning beside the doorway of a tavern on a narrow street not far from the river, lazily tuning the battered lute slung over his shoulder.

“Listen,” he said.

Eljara, standing beside him with arms folded, frowned slightly.

“To what?”

Sean nodded toward the street.

“The noise.”

At first she heard nothing unusual: carts rattling over cobbles, merchants shouting about early vegetables, the distant clang of a smith’s hammer.

Then it became clear.

Laughter.

Not the forced winter laughter people used when they were tired and cold and pretending things would improve. This laughter was looser.

Freer.

“Ah,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Sean replied with a small grin. “Spring.”

A cart rolled past them loaded with early greens—wilted, expensive, and already attracting an impatient crowd.

Eljara watched the buyers arguing over prices.

“They’ve waited months for that,” she said.

“They haven’t waited months for vegetables,” Sean answered.

He nodded toward the people.

“They’ve waited months to feel alive again.”

Two dockworkers nearly collided in the middle of the street arguing about something neither of them fully understood.

A group of students staggered past, laughing too loudly.

Across the square, a fiddler had started playing a quick tune.

“Look at them,” Sean said.

Eljara did.

The changes were subtle but everywhere.

Couples walked closer than winter allowed.

Voices carried farther.

Movement felt faster.

“Winter compresses people,” Sean said.

“Yes.”

“And spring releases them.”

Eljara tilted her head slightly.

“Which means?”

“Less discipline.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Oh, it is.”

Sean strummed a few quiet chords on his lute while watching the square slowly fill with life.

A few children had started running in circles near the fountain.

Someone clapped along to the fiddler’s tune.

Someone else tried dancing.

Poorly.

“But that’s the point,” Sean said.

“What is?”

“Spring isn’t careful.”

The music sped up slightly.

The crowd grew thicker.

Someone uncorked a bottle.

Someone else shouted a toast.

“See?” Sean said.

“The city’s breathing again.”

Eljara studied the scene.

“Feels harmless.”

“For now.”

“And later?”

Sean shrugged.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

He gestured toward the growing crowd.

“On what people decide to do with the freedom they’ve just remembered.”

Eljara watched the square carefully.

Energy was spreading like a spark through dry straw.

Not chaos.

Not yet.

But something very close to it.

Above the rooftops a flock of swallows cut across the sky in quick black arcs.

Few people noticed.

Sean did.

He nodded once.

“Here we go again,” he said quietly.

Spring had arrived.

Which meant the year had truly begun.

And once the city started moving,

it rarely stopped gently.

---

SPRING & REBIRTH
🜍 Month 3 · The Turning of the Year
🜍 Week 1 — The city wakes
🜍 Life returns before anyone understands it

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game — The Old World

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