The Twelfth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Twelve

Winter had laid a quilt of snow over the land, and now snowflakes were softly drifting down.  Icicles fringe the eaves of the wooden half of the house nestled into the hill.  Inside the fire crackles warmly and the black dragon stares contemplatively into his mug of spiced cider, and then he speaks, the steam curling around his snout.  “At last the Ice Basilisk, dazed from lack of sleep, left the Plane of Frost and Flame, and moved on as per his arrangement with Lyra.  While he hadn’t dared go home to the Ice Plane there were a few, a very few, other Planes that felt like home.  A day here, a day there, the Ice Basilisk had been stringing out his visits to one such Plane where he could truly relax and sleep in peace: the Winter Plane.  So it was that Lyra found the Ice Basilisk peacefully sleeping, curled up in an ice cave, his white scales gleaming entrancingly in the pale blue light.”

The Winter Plane

Snow reshapes the landscape

Heavy clouds lie across the sky

The wind howls in the distance

The voice of the Winter Plane.

White, gleaming, glistening, white

Cold and crisp and clean

Blue, piercing, soul touching, blue

Of sky, of ice, of light,

A cold that wraps about the land

That seeps into the bones

A ray of sun sends rainbows sparking

That warm a shivering soul,

Forests of evergreens stand proud

Their needles encased in ice

Forests of deciduous barren rattle

Clawing at the sky,

Glaciers rise above the land

Filling mountain vales

White with snow above the turquoise

Of ancient, stalwart, ice,

Tunnels delve into the ice

They delve into the snow

Caverns drip with melt

In pools so still and cold,

Ice caves with beds of snow

Are lit a pale blue

By light filtered, softened, brightened

By its journey through the ice.

Here within a cave of ice

The Ice Basilisk lies in sleep

Curled in a mound of scales

In a cozy nook yet frozen,

Here the phoenix Lyra tracks him

Attuned by time and care

Flying through the dancing light

Out of reach of falling snow.

Deep within the caves

Where the light is dim as gloaming

The Ice Basilisk sleeps, gleaming

A gem within a crystal setting,

Lyra pauses ere she enters

Watching as his scales rise and fall

Watching the play of blue on white

In the icy false twilight,

Hearing, gentle, rumbling snores

She dares to glance along his tail

Glancing at his pale muzzle

Tired she slips and sees frost lashed eyelids,

Tired she slips on air so cool

On into the cave of ice

Her own flames flickering gold and red

Dancing light upon his scales,

The Ice Basilisk dreams of home

Of sleeping in an ice cave

Beside his parents cool and cozy

In a time before the curse, before he ever left,

A draft stirs the air, tickling his nose

Groggy he slides towards consciousness

Still wrapped in the dream of home

He blearily opens his eyes,

Exhausted from traveling across the Planes

Lyra’s gaze rests on the Ice Basilisk’s face

Entranced by a sight, before unseen

Entranced by scales, bright and shining,

Eyes of gold, of warmth, of light

Meet eyes of silver, cool, soothing

Widening with shock and fear

As gold is frosted over.

A howl of grief shakes the caves

Shattering icicles, disturbing still pools

It echoes and echoes

Back unto a cozy, unassuming, cave,

The Ice Basilisk’s heart bleeds fire and ice

He’s being is torn by grief so deep

A fissure bubbling with rage in its depths

A split down to the roots of his soul,

By rage, by love, by grief ablaze

His heart wells from scale to scale with emotion

Burning, burning, blazing bright

A burn at once both hot and cold,

With a final howl of determination

The Ice Basilisk tears off his shame

Calling upon his truest self

He reaches for the sky.

The stars that peek through Winter’s clouds

Are stunned by a cosmic blaze

Of white that radiates from

A Winter Plane ice cave.

Within the cave all is white

A mighty ice lizard stretches his wings

His heart laid bare by fire and ice

His wings a mirror of his soul blazing.

Within the conflagration

That leaves the ice caves untouched

The gorgeous statue of a phoenix, ice wrought

Brightens in the light,

Brightens til she shines with equal splendor

Glowing white

Two stars within an ice cave

In the Winter Plane,

Within the blaze Lyra awakens

Her soul and heart in fire forged

She listens to the whispers

That pervade the silent roar,

Listens to the sound of wings

Vast and shining, blazing

Listens to them speak a name

Lazarinth.

“Lazarinth!”  She cries

The blaze warms and cools

And as that same blaze dies

The white gives way to red and gold.

Across the Planes across the Realms

Ice was melting as if Spring, or gentle fire

Was drawing back Winter’s mantle

Returning frozen statues to life.

Within an ice cave in the Winter Plane

Silver eyes again met gold

The phoenix Lyra, and

The ice dragon, Lazarinth,

His metamorphosis complete

Lazarinth gazed with love unbridled

Upon the gorgeous flaming phoenix

Lighting up the once dim ice cave.

Together they came to know

That their guides of frost and flame

Were leading home the other victims

Of the Ice Basilisk’s curse,

Together they traveled to the Ice Plane

For a long awaited reunion

With the ice dragon’s parents

Astonished, heartsore, and joyous,

Together they spread their wings and flew

Across the Realms, across the Planes

Lingering time and time again

In the Plane of Frost and Flame.

There was silence, even the wind paused in its nightly tirade, and the crackle of the fire was the loudest sound.  “Thus, did an ice lizard with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge undergo the trials of life and complete his metamorphosis to dragon.  Thus, did a phoenix reviled for her strength meet one who cared not one whit about it and how the two of them burned bright and shattered the curse.  This was the Tale of the Ice Basilisk’s Curse and how it brought together two lonely wanderers of the Planes who made the guides so that others might find their way home.”  The fire popped and tumultuous applause filled the room.  Outside the winter wind howled an accolade.  The black dragon smiled and the kitsune once again felt tears soak his fur.  The kitsune looked up but this time the elf was gladly smiling, her face radiant and her tears glittering.  Her hair caught the fire light and seemed to glow.  As she moved to set him on the arm of the couch beside her he reached out telepathically for the first time, suspicious and curious:  What is your name?

            The elf laughed and the merry sound filled the room over the applause.  “Lyra.”  With a wink at the astonished kitsune, who hadn’t really expected to be right, she sashayed over to the black dragon.  She tossed a glance at the fire behind him and a fog of smoke wrapped around them.  In a flash the smoke and the two beings within it disappeared.  In the mirror on the mantle the kitsune saw a phoenix and a white dragon flying away, they turned for a moment and winked at him and for a moment he saw just two eyes, one gold and the other silver.  It struck the kitsune that the silver seemed brighter, darker, against white scales rather than black.  Then they disappeared into a haze of white and the mirror went back to being reflective.

The Eleventh Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Eleven

Frost curled around the edges of the windows peering inside where the fire burned bright.  The kitsune padded along the back of a couch sneaking up on the elf woman with the bright red hair.  Silently, he pounced!  Without turning the elegant lady reached behind her head and plucked him from the air.  With a smile on her face she settled him on her lap.  The bemused kitsune cooperated fluffing his two tails over her skirts.  He was where he intended to be anyways.  The black dragon’s scales glinted as if he was smirking.  The light playing on his scales settled down and he spoke.  “Without knowing what she had in mind the Ice Basilisk followed Lyra whilst fear and hope warred in his heart.  The Plane she led him to was a curious conundrum: the Plane of Frost and Flame.”

The Plane of Frost and Flame

Icy chills battle with scorching drafts

Light gives meaning to crystalline creations

Trees of frost bear petals of flame

In an unlikely, dazzling, Plane.

Ice raises the ground

With pillars of crystal

Fire razes the earth

Leaving ash in its wake,

Frost etches patterns on stone

Fire peels them off

Contorting in the air

Lighting up ice crystals,

Strange the frost that does not melt

Strange the fire that does not die

Where cold and heat exist entwined

Where frost and flame exist in harmony.

Here the phoenix leads the Ice Basilisk

Here they linger for a month and a day

Here they create and dream and laugh

In a Plane where both their powers hold sway.

They weave fire and frost

Entwine flame and ice

Forging that which can exist

Only here, until now,

Now a phoenix and an Ice Basilisk

In tandem create in hope and joy

Forging baubles, forging guides

That can survive in Planes inimical,

When that month and day have passed

The Ice Basilisk lingers sleepless and longing

The phoenix gathers up their creations

Carrying them off to other Planes,

Baubles she hung on the limbs of trees

By the dwellings of sentients across the Planes

Fire and frost entwined in beauty

Inspiring hope and sparking joy,

The guides were larger, stranger, and complex

Globes of interwoven frost and flame

Keyed to seek out the lost

Keyed to lead them home again,

Lyra left them in the dark and deep

In smoke, in fog, in caverns, in night

She strewed them about the Ice Basilisk’s trail

That those in need would be found by light.

Behind the black dragon a globe appeared in the mirror, a globe woven of frost and flame.  For a moment the kitsune thought it was coming for someone in the room, and then it turned and drifted away.  The mirror was just a mirror again, reflecting the room.  The black dragon picked up his tale.  “Thus, from an unlikely friendship were born the guides of frost and flame.  Even today we hear rumors of the guides leading beings home to their loved ones, or leading them to the home they never knew could be.”  The kitsune wondered about the guide he had seen in the mirror, and who it had been coming for before it turned away.

The Tenth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Ten

The room where the evening gathering was held was hot, almost too hot for comfort, and as the kitsune watched the dragon stoked the fire.  The fire blazed behind the black dragon its flames reaching for his scales hungrily.  “The Ice Basilisk had fled to the Plane of Desert and Flame determined to end the plight of his curse upon the worlds.  Had he been thinking logically he might have sought out one of the soggier Planes in which to elude the phoenix.  Instead he sought a wretched place in which a creature born to ice might die at last.  He fled, tears of fear, of heartbreak, of rage, blinding him.  Desperate the phoenix flew in hot pursuit.  A Plane is a vast place to search, and this particular Plane was a seething expanse of deceit.”

The Plane of Desert and Flame

Endless sands glittering

Eternal fires burning

Smoke barely besmirches the air

Heat rises shimmering,

At the edge of your sight

Just out of reach

Surrounding you on all sides

Elusive, taunting, mirages.

The Ice Basilisk runs

Stumbling on shifting ground

Fleeing headlong towards a fiery death

Always another step ahead,

Ice statues shimmer on the horizon

Impossible, a whisper in his mind

Drowned by an infernal scream

The fault, the blame, it all is mine!

I will not, cannot, hurt again

Not them, not me, by ice and flame

Not her, I shall not this I swear

This word more precious than my name.

Flinging himself down scorching dunes

Tumbling blindly, polished by sand

Blazing white in a world of red and gold

Unwitting he stands out, an unintended shout.

Lyra flies in desperation

Flies in fear and flies in hope

Flies in fury at curses

At a caster so unwise and cruel,

A phoenix in a world of flame

A world of shimmering heat

She casts about for a spot of cold

In a world where none should be,

Faraway she senses it

A chill that weakens, dying here

A frozen heart, she thinks in fury

Would never know such guilt and fear,

A howling storm builds around her

Carrying her with wings of flame

Across the shimmering deceitful desert

Howling its mistress’s name,

Lyra, calls the howling wind

That scours the desert

In tandem with sand

Unmerciful it batters ice,

Lyra, her name echoes in his mind

Screamed by the wind

But he dare not live for her

He dared not risk his curse so grim,

The heat he finds is real now

Beating on his scales hot and bright

This flame before him will be his end

An end in blinding, blazing, light,

The phoenix flies in love and rage

She smites the flame while still on wing

Before him lies naught by scattered sand

Cleansed of the executer of suffering,

Gathering the sand within her storm

She flings it up into the sky

And casts upon the Ice Basilisk

The umbra of her fury’s might,

“You shall not leave me!”

The phoenix cried

“You shall not leave the worlds!

Atone if you must, but not by death!”

“How then,” the Ice Basilisk whispers

Defeat within his ice slick voice

“How then shall I atone

For all the ends, those frigid ends, that I have sown?”

“Come with me,” the phoenix spoke

Her voice as honey and as steel

“Let us give back to the worlds

Sparks of joy for all to feel.”

A weary spark of wonder

Of intrigue and of hope

Kindled in the Ice Basilisk’s heart

As he stood upon the shifting sands,

And as he gazed at darkness

At shadow freely given

He thought he knew the sound of love

As he turned and followed Lyra’s storm.

“So the phoenix revealed her power, and wondered later that its extent left the Ice Basilisk unfazed.  So Lyra kept the Ice Basilisk from the fires of death with the offer of a way to give back to the world: to create and not destroy.”  The black dragon smiled toothily at his audience and the kitsune wondered at his haunted eyes.

The Ninth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Nine

Night had long since fallen but it seemed to lay across the land with more weight than the other nights, as if Nox herself was leaning in, listening.  The black dragon gently tore a log in half, filling the room with the scent of pitch, and softly tossed the pieces onto the fire.  The kitsune looked up from where he had been busily grooming his two, yes they were both still there all two of them, tails and sneezed, the scent of fir sap assaulting his snout.  Sitting alert on the arm of the couch next to the red haired elf woman he wrapped his tails over his paws and fluffed them.  The black dragon licked his talons clean and began: “The months turned and the two beings, one of fire, the other of ice, traveled from Plane to Plane.  They explored new worlds, exclaimed over mineral formations, expounded on their observations, sharing their joy and wonder, no longer alone.  All the while a pall hung over them.  Every time the phoenix turned to share something with her friend she paused, or he looked away focusing fiercely on his carefully dulled talons always scuffing them in mud or ashes or weird goo.  His curse was a tangible thing between them dimming moments and nourishing fear.  Lyra adored having a friend to share life with, but she feared the day they slipped in their careful dance and it all came to an end.  While it was true she had no desire to freeze, forevermore a statue, perhaps dead for all they knew, it wasn’t what truly worried her.  Sooth she wanted to live now with a friend by her side and joy in their hearts: there was so much to see; so much to experience.  However, her true fear was for the Ice Basilisk.  If he froze her, she would likely know no more, but he would live on in agony, alone, for the rest of his torturous existence knowing that he was the reason her flames had died.  And as each moon turned and they grew closer and the phoenix seared her name into the Ice Basilisk’s heart brighter and brighter, he battled two fears.  The agonizing one she considered, that he would freeze her, that she would be forever gone from the world.  That she would be frozen, still and cold as she never could be in life, and that it would be his doing.  But also, that he would freeze some other hapless creature and that she would leave, and perhaps she should, he thought morosely, perhaps she would be safer far away from me.  In Nox’s Forest Plane his fear took form, an innocent form which made it all the worse.”

Nox’s Forest Plane

The goddess of Night reigns

Across Realms and Planes

Oft she is found to roam

In her dark sylvan home.

The Plane of Night and Forest

Nox’s Forest Plane

Whatever you may call it

Its nature is the same,

A forest ancient and proud

Hung with tapestries of time

Cloaked in darkness

Of eternal night,

Towering trees form cathedrals

Their deaths leave windows to the sky

To let in the source of their life

The strongest of silver moonlight,

Dark leaves grow sinister

Designed to snatch every last ray

On twisted vines and stalwart trunks

On stems of flowers bold,

It was here in sylvan shadows

Caught by forces beyond his control

The Ice Basilisk’s heart

Grew more fractured and deathly cold,

As the phoenix and the Ice Basilisk

Explored the depths of the forest

A mighty forest matriarch fell

One terrible windy night,

With a crash she succumbed

To a scar deep and old

From a battle with lightning

Long ago,

She split in twain with a splintered crack!

And fell to the forest floor

Revealing in her hollowed heart

A shining, transparent, crystal,

Moon beams fell through the new born window

Gobbled greedily by leaves

But not before a single ray

Created a catastrophe,

Off guard in the dark depths

Of the Forest of Night

The Ice Basilisk gazed

On the matriarch’s demise,

He gazed on a crystal

That had caught light

With the same ease

That it caught his eyes,

With the same ease

That it caught the interest

Of curious creatures

Peering round a boulder,

Innocent of the role it played

The crystal caught the Ice Basilisk’s gaze

And bent it towards a craggy boulder

Where three curious wolf pups, froze.

A wolf’s mournful howl split the air

The Ice Basilisk desperate

Yanked his gaze to the black, black, forest floor

Too late,

Too late to prevent another petrification

Too late to unsee in perfect clarity

Three sets of oversized paws on too short legs

Glinting in the moonlight, madly, innocently.

Closing his eyes and running blind

The Ice Basilisk took off into the night

Heart pounding Lyra watched, feathers flickering

As her only friend fled the light.

A tear ran down the black dragon’s scales, closely followed by another.  A drop of water struck the kitsune’s ear and he looked up startled.  The elf woman whose lap he had preempted was gazing at the storyteller her eyes shimmering with tears.  Or, the kitsune thought watching the firelight catch in her hair, is she seeing the black dragon or, something else.  Quietly he licked her hand and she smiled down on him stroking his spine.  The black dragon continued his voice perceptibly roughened.  “Torn by fear the phoenix and the Ice Basilisk were separated in Nox’s Forest Plane.  The Ice Basilisk feared his curse and the loss of his friend through whatever means and so he set out to lose her himself before he could hurt anymore.  Lyra the phoenix feared that her presence would only make the curse worse because she was a being of both fire and light.  Perhaps she also still feared her demise.  Regardless the Ice Basilisk vanished into the night and left the Plane without a trace.  Or so he thought.  The phoenix, unbeknownst to him, decided that he needed a friend more than obscurity.  Perhaps, she thought, if she had been paying attention she would have known the wolves were there and could have warned him.  So Lyra called upon the goddess of the Plane, and Nox in her wisdom and benevolence told the phoenix whereto her frosty lizard had fled.”  The kitsune found himself on the couch alone without quite knowing how it had happened.  The elf was leaning her head against the dragon’s and if their tears mingled there was no way to see beyond her hair.  Almost, it seemed her hair glinted with triumph.  The kitsune cocked his head as whimsy took flight within it.

The Eighth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Eight

A cloud drifted over the moon and shadows fell across the land merging with night.  Inside thin beams of smoke arose from two candles flanking the mirror, flanking the dragon.  Almost, the kitsune thought, as if pillars flanking the gate to some foreign Plane.  The dragon shifted and the smoke shifted with him, following, flanking.  Silence fell and he spoke.  “While he would not let himself look at the phoenix the Ice Basilisk had gained a sense of her from the chill that wound through the air and he knew that the fog had put her into a sorry state.  Remorseful, he avoided the Planes of fog and rain and sleet and whatnot that a phoenix might find herself bogged down in.  At the same time, more than ever, he was determined to find Planes that would buffer his curse.  And so they met again, in the Plane of Smoke and Shadows.”

The Plane of Smoke and Shadows

An ashy smudge across the sky

A dark cast across the land

Rare the light and rare the flame

That gives form to smoke and shadows,

Rolling hills of stone and grass

Forests short and dry

All that gleams is smudged with smoke

Or hidden within shadows,

Even the Ice Basilisk’s shining white

Is dampened with soot

His scales grey and dulled

A pale specter in the dark,

Faraway from water

Faraway from light

The Ice Basilisk lingers

In a smoky night,

He stares upon an ancient cliff

Tracing lines of bygone eras

Waiting for the glint of flame

Hoping, fearing, fire’s coming,

She kept her gaze upon the smog

Thick as thieves with stolen sight

Listening to the whispers of smoke

Searching for an errant chill,

Over forest, crackling

Over fields of stone

Over valleys with umbra hung

The phoenix flew alone,

At last a chill upon the air

A twitch as if the smoke confused

Churned around a foreign shape

As water vapor condensed and froze,

Careful as her kind oft was not

Lyra alit atop a cliff

Her eyes firmly affixed

On the distant shifting smoke,

“Ice Basilisk!” She called

Her voice ringing

Setting particulate clouded air

Awhirl as it resonated,

“I am here.” He whispered

Scant the breath

That bore that sound into the night

He pressed his head against the cliff,

His eyes cast down upon the ground

The dark, dull, stone and soil

Barren of life

Stripped of shine,

For the first time

She heard his voice

A whisper of ice

Smooth and cool,

Leaning into the cliff

He wrapped his moniker

So hated and feared

About himself in her voice,

Bound by loneliness

Longing for and leery of sight

Amidst the smoke and shadows

Fire and ice conversed through the night.

Upon the mantle the shadows under the cloak of the candle smoke were darker, deeper, shifting at odds to the usual drafts as the black dragon spoke.  “It would be the first of many lingering conversations between the two, wrapped in darkness, cloaked in smoke.  Brought together by curiosity and loneliness they came to find that they were more akin than any would expect.  Both possessed, by one means or another, of fearsome power.  Both with hearts that longed to travel and explore foreign Planes, especially the more eclectic ones.  Both born of extreme elements, a greater, wilder, power, in which they reveled.”  The black dragon blew one long breath over his shoulder and the candles went out.  Smoke rose twining with shadows.

The Seventh Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Seven

Frost glittered on the window panes, fanning out around the edges as if peeking in.  The jewels were gone from the mantle and the mirror stood alone.  The black dragon swooped down on the hillside through the gleaming fog that brushed his scales.  The rabbit from an earlier performance clutched safely in one taloned paw.  He returned it to an embarrassed young magician who muttered a spell to return the construct to a dormant state and hastily stuffed it back into his hat.  They returned inside where the kitsune was disgruntledly picking white fur out of his teeth from his own attempts to catch it.  Alas, the construct only looked like a rabbit; even its fur tasted absolutely appalling.  The fog caught on the black dragon’s scales gleamed in the firelight as he settled down.  “Their encounter in the Plane of Jewels and Night, of which the phoenix remained unaware, had made quite an impact on the Ice Basilisk.  He wondered if maybe he could tell his own tale to her, and for once someone might actually listen.  But how to tell her without putting her at risk of freezing, silenced?  The opportunity came much sooner than he could have dreamed.  The very next Plane he moved to: the Plane of Fog and Frost.”

The Plane of Fog and Frost

Cool air blankets the land

Laden with water glistening, obscuring

Cold kisses the ground

Leaving curls of ice in its wake.

Fog as thick as night

Concealing, obscuring, pervasive

Frost as cool as loneliness

Born of fear.

In fear the Ice Basilisk wanders

In Planes whose natures mitigate his curse

In fear the people flee him, save one

In curiosity one seeks him,

Flaming, singing, known to pain

The phoenix undaunted searches

Pursuing a mystery, a question, a purpose

That which she had lacked.

Slipping through the fog

Gazing at the frost

Fondly, heartbroken

The Ice Basilisk roams,

Catching glimpses of white

The broad gleam of scales

Obscured by blinding, shifting, fog

The phoenix pursues,

Her flames burn untethered

Casting orange and red and gold

Into the glittering fog

Catching on water droplets far and near,

The Ice Basilisk looks up from the frost

At the fog once white and pure

A glint of red catches his eyes

A gorgeous gem in distant air,

Alert he slips

Quiet and pale

Into a hollow

Of frost coated shale,

Thoughtful he considers

The nature of his refuge

Thoughtful he eyes his talons

Sharp enough to gouge soft stone,

Quiet and blazingly beautiful

The phoenix flies over

Unsuspecting of the shale outcrop

Embraced by fog and frost,

The Ice Basilisk considers a small shard

Of stone beside his feet

Then slides out from the hollow

Not to flee, but to search.

When the moon of the Plane

Of Fog and Frost

Was almost returning to a familiar face

The Ice Basilisk moved.

Exhausted from fighting

The perpetual fog

The phoenix wandered

Wondering listlessly,

In the corner of her eye

A glint

Not frost, not fog, not random stone

Scales,

Turning on a wingtip

She flew after it

Beating against the relentless moisture

To no avail,

There was naught around her yet again

But unforgiving fog

Naught to see in all the world

But water suspended in the air,

A scrape, as if talon against stone

She turned again

Wondering vaguely

If it was all delusion,

Would some powerful Ice Basilisk

Renowned for destruction

Of lives, of Planes

Have any interest in her save death?

Still she flew, following

A glimpse of scales

A rasp of talons

A hint of cold upon the breeze

That turned fog to ice,

Ice crystals fell

Shattering against the frosted ground

As high as she was, the phoenix thought

That could be her,

Lying on the cold, still, ground

Discarded shards of ice

Robbed of flame of life

Her spirit flown,

Would death be so bad

If death was what she chased

A chance to rest, to not be

Out of reach of pain,

Hallucinating, dreaming, dying, living

She knew naught

When before her appeared, atop a cliff

A mighty lizard gleaming white,

He gazed into the distance

A glint of red in the corner of his eye

Heart pounding he fled into the mist

And froze against a snowdrift, unseen,

A sense of finality came over Lyra

A phoenix in the fog

Chasing some great Ice Basilisk

Surrounded by frost,

Slipping in the air

Her gaze dropped

Losing all knowledge

Of where he had gone,

Gaining more than she yet knew

Before her rose an obsidian cliff

Unchipped, unmarred, by time or talon

But not unmarked,

Writ across the stone in frost

White against stark, gleaming, black

A tale was scribed before her eyes

The history of the Ice Basilisk.

The elf woman smiled and gently stroked the kitsune where he lay in her lap, his eyes fixed on the great black dragon.  The dragon wrapped up the evening’s story.  “So, the phoenix found what she thought she sought.  The tale of the Ice Basilisk writ by his own hand.  Of his curiosity and relentless pursuit for knowledge.  Of the romance that never was in his oblivion to matters that pertained to himself.  Of the curse laid upon him that felled its caster.  Of a Plane that was destroyed when he sought death.  Of a phoenix’s song in the darkness that gave him hope.  Hope that a creature such as he need not be entirely alone.”  After a contemplative silence applause filled the room.

The Sixth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Six

Night enclosed the dwelling, part wooden house, part stone cavern, where the evening gathering was held.  Smoke spiraled up, from the chimney hidden in the hillside, rising towards the stars.  Stars that shone down on a quiet night glittering like jewels.  Inside before the mirror gems were scattered upon the mantle, topaz, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, peridots, and amethysts glittering in the light cast by six candles.  Oddly clear candles such that the flames appeared to float in the air above the silver candle holders.  The kitsune scraped wax off his snout from his earlier explorations.  Extremely translucent wax made visible by a smattering of red fur.  The black dragon chuckled softly as he watched the young kitsune for a moment before resuming his tale.  “As the months turned and the Ice Basilisk moved from Plane to Plane he and the phoenix caught glimpses of each other, always fleeting, and always he fled, until he was caught with nowhere to go.  It was deep in the caverns of the Plane of Jewels and Night.”

The Plane of Jewels and Night

Stars glitter their glamour caught

By crystals blooming

On hillsides of stone

In a time deep beyond the gloaming,

Through the crystals

To the Earth’s heart

The glamour travels

Lighting the dark,

A gentle glow

In subterranean blooms

Tinted by minerals

A range of hues

Soft greens and pastel blues

Lavender and yellow pale

Fainter, darker, colors yet

Blood reds and violets hale,

Pillars arise, single crystals

Ancient crystals layered by time

Supporting vast caverns

Defying grime,

Amid these gardens

Touched by light

Are caverns echoing

With eternal night.

Wandering in darkness

Unseen and unseeing

The Ice Basilisk sleepless

Persists in being

In this Plane down in darkness

Far away from lethal light

The curse inert to the power of

The Plane of Jewels and Night.

In the darkness a voice is rising

In song aching, pure, and sweet

In a stony cul de sac

The Ice Basilisk has nowhere to retreat,

Trapped he freezes still as stone

Listening with all his heart

Every note balm and bane

Snowflake and poisoned dart,

The song winds through the darkness

Echoing from granite ancient

Filling the night with music

Emotion to beguile and enchant,

The phoenix sings of sorrow

The phoenix sings of pain

The phoenix sings of beauty and joy

Persistence in her refrain,

Lyra sings her own tale

Of being met with awe and fear

Of betrayal and heartbreak

Of the slow turning of the year

She sings of joy in moments

A rainbow, a sweet wind, a shining jewel

Of comradeship however fleeting

Warm as sunshine in a world cruel,

She sings of her intrigue

Of glimpses of white scales

Of rumors of an Ice Basilisk

Of her questions of his tale,

She sings of the Plane of Smoke and Mirrors

Of a first chance meeting

Of the strange way that he fled

Of a vision fleeting,

Through the smoke she saw him

As she sought to defy the mirrors

Almost she caught a glimpse of wings

Shimmering like tears.

A soft upturn touched the dragon’s lips as if a gentle smile.  His eyes glittered akin to the jewels upon the mantle.  “Enraptured by the phoenix’s song the Ice Basilisk stood in the darkness listening.  Salting the cave with tears he wondered what the phoenix would think if she knew his whole tale.  He dared not seek her though and she ventured no deeper into the caverns of the Plane of Jewels and Night.”  Still with that gentle smile on his draconic face the black dragon ended his tale for the evening.  The elf who had opened the window the other night rose and laid one, gentle, pale hand on the dragon’s ebony scales.  Her hair gleamed red catching the firelight and stirring softly as if touched by a breeze that left the rest of the room unmarked.  The kitsune tilted his head at them curiously as they communed unheard and the gathering began to disperse for the night.