5th Day of Yuletide

A congenial air spread out from the fire to warm the gathering.  The stars were bright overhead, and on the horizon mighty storm clouds loomed.  The birds preened happily.  No one, not even the kitsune with five bushy tails bothered to tuck their nose in for warmth.  Folks cuddled in to their loved ones with contented sighs.  The white woman smiled contentedly where she sat curled up by the fire.  The bard picked up a double-headed drum and beat softly as he picked up his tale.  “For all that each had seen many a decade pass, that week it seemed they would be forever alone, as the journey stretched on, placing one foot after another North.  Before the moon could wax to gibbous the semblance of eternity shattered.”

Storms Destroy Parallels

The faint moonlight that had trickled

Down through the thick needled forest

Casting the faintest of sparkles from the snow

Was gobbled up by clouds thick and dark

A battalion of storm clouds.

Jarel Frost watched the forest vanish before his eyes

Leaving the blackest of darkness

That within the mantle of a winter storm

The wind picked up with a howl

Pelting him with cruel shards of hail,

The Winter Queen saw darkness descend,

And smiled

Even she would be at the mercy

Of a storm so fierce she could feel portent looming

It would be epic, if any were left to remember,

The storm raged, ripping into the trees

Reshaping the snowscapes with ice and wind

Coating the trees and snow in ice

Then shattering them

Into the heaving, morphing, drifts,

The storm tore from west to east

From north to south

A churning, twisting, mass of weather

That moved the world to its command

Utterly obliterating any chance of parallel paths,

Jarel Frost gave thanks to his immortal father

That his own body could survive

The fearsome weather

The wind could lift him but never break

And the cold was his birthright,

The Winter Queen embraced the storm

Throwing herself into its battle

Her own immortal body

Battered and flung about unbreaking

No death could find her in a winter storm,

But though both of the travelers

Gloried in the might of the storm

And neither could die from such

Even immortals and semi-immortals wearied

And the storm was strong and long,

So it was that Jarel Frost bestirred himself

To take up the reigns of the wind

That it would release him back to the ground

Where he followed its chill gusts

Into ice-coated stone with the sound of a cave,

So it was that the Winter Queen at last commanded

The snow to open a tunnel before her

That she might descend below

To a semblance of peace

In a conjoining cavern,

It was as each caught their breath

Stretching their ears beyond their own heartbeats

Filtering past the roaring storm outside

That they sensed in the darkness

That they were not alone.