Season of Cruelty

It had been a cruel season.

The sun had not come on time. The clouds, spewing frozen runoff that was neither snow nor rain, hung in the sky as the fields sat untended. The animals died, and so did the children.
The Priest danced until his feet bled and his knees swelled. He tranced and he prayed and he fasted and sang. And then one day he did not wake up. His body was dragged to the edge of the village and left. The ground was frozen through and digging was impossible. There was no spare wood to burn his body.

No one was ever able to offer much of an explanation. The old man named Victor raised his hands to the heavens and cursed the gods of man.
It is a cruel season. He said.
And he attempted to ignite the dead tree limbs they had collected with the old lighter he'd received as a present after returning from the war. He rallied the villagers for a time and spoke of the passage of time, the changing of the seasons and the movements of the stars. And for a time they listened.
But they continued to grow hungry, and soon they turned even on the old man named Victor.

And the season did pass, in time. And Victor was dead when the clouds broke. He was in the earth when the land warmed, but he was cold. The villagers did their best to repair the damage to their crops. It was a futile endeavor. People were starving.

They were simple people, unused to prolonged privation of the basic necessities. Victor would have shaken his head and bayed them patience. But the old man was dead, as previously mentioned.

So they started eating each other.