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Description
"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you dies each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason."
-Ernest Hemingway

Year after year, day after day, summer evenings and winter-chilled mornings passed like oil on rushing water. However, the peculiar trappings of the great Willow Manor stood strong, proud, and timeless against the currents of the world. Slower still moved the life of one mostly ordinary girl - one whose fate had been decided from her birth. For Marigold Willoughby was dying. Diagnosed early with a fatal and unknown degenerative disease, Marigold had spent her entire life ensconced within the walls of her family home. Willow Manor was nothing short of grand: high arches, delicate iron fences, and rambling meadows that somehow passed for courtyards. The house's generations of inhabitants were well-to-do explorers: paleontologists, archaeologists, and even one cryptozoologist (though he was an odd duck to be sure). New as these fields were at the time, each finding raked in considerable sums that led the family's founder to buy the estate. It was here that Marigold withered away, unable to leave her room unassisted.

Description
"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you dies each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason."
-Ernest Hemingway

Year after year, day after day, summer evenings and winter-chilled mornings passed like oil on rushing water. However, the peculiar trappings of the great Willow Manor stood strong, proud, and timeless against the currents of the world. Slower still moved the life of one mostly ordinary girl - one whose fate had been decided from her birth. For Marigold Willoughby was dying. Diagnosed early with a fatal and unknown degenerative disease, Marigold had spent her entire life ensconced within the walls of her family home. Willow Manor was nothing short of grand: high arches, delicate iron fences, and rambling meadows that somehow passed for courtyards. The house's generations of inhabitants were well-to-do explorers: paleontologists, archaeologists, and even one cryptozoologist (though he was an odd duck to be sure). New as these fields were at the time, each finding raked in considerable sums that led the family's founder to buy the estate. It was here that Marigold withered away, unable to leave her room unassisted.