8th Day of Yuletide

The clouds had retreated to the horizon leaving the stars to twinkle down.  A chill fell across the land as the vast ocean of space stole away the Earth’s heat but the gathering around the fire cared not.  Footprints radiated in towards the gathering and milled in circles around it, some tracking from a long way off and some appearing from thin air.  A great snowy owl, late to the party, flew over and noticed two such sets of footprints that began in an expanse of clear snow and continued on side by side.  They were soft prints such as those made by the reindeer herders’ boots but lighter as if the wearers weighed less than they aught or hadn’t quite settled down to earth.  He followed them all the way over the fire were the bard was laughing with a woman dressed all in white and on their feet were matching boots of white reindeer hide.  The bard picked up a bodhran with an intricate snowflake designed that twisted as the viewer watched revealing foxes and owls and reindeer cavorting.  He beat out a steady traveling beat and then shifted into a more frenetic rhythm with the odd skipped beat before returning to a steady pace.  “The two climbed up out of the tunnel into the open air once more but still in darkness.  The storm had left behind its thick, looming, clouds.”

Traveling Together

Side by side in the Northern dark

Of a winter long and cold

The travelers tread on the crusts of snow

Out from the forests sheltering embrace

Out to the tundra’s vast plain.

As they journeyed by instinct and memory

Sightless, they filled the air with sound

Speaking of the lives that had brought them here

Cautioning wearing away to leave truth

To sidle out into the open air.

It was in this peculiar lightless world

Made of the snow beneath their feet

The taste of ice in the air

The sound of each other

That they heard the Voice again,

It pierced the darkness, weaving sorrow

As it haunted the long cold night

Winding about them with bittersweet beauty

With nothing to allay it

It passed them by unknowing,

Even as the Winter Queen froze in silence

Her breath shallow and soundless

Jarel Frost inhaled the icy air

Taking his element into his lungs as he listened

And sang,

At first it was a simple harmony

Bracing the Voice with notes

Drawn from his own loneliness and heartache

And as his voice filled her ears

The Winter Queen wept,

But then he changed his tune

Amid the heartache and sorrow he sang

We are coming

You are not alone

But if he was heard there was no sign,

The Voice continued to pass them by

And as it faded once more into darkness

The travelers spun

Needles in their own magnetic field

Turning towards the pole of heartache.