11th Day of Yuletide

By now those gathered had become accustomed to the thick fringe of shadow at the border where firelight met night.  It seemed that all the listeners were crowding in, no longer willing to listen from afar.  The bard had a similar instrument before him as the night before only this one had a base and bridge of ice and was strung with starlight.  Each note rang like a shard of ice or the twinkle of a star as he played.  “Now that Jarel Frost and the Winter Queen had seen the Voice it was all the more mysterious, for neither had seen its like before.  What manner of being was it to lack a form of its own yet be forced into it upon exposure to light?”

Freeing the Voice

Jarel Frost sought understanding through their song

He sang a winding duet seeking to mirror the Voice

To demonstrate empathy

He sang of loneliness and desolation

Of heartbreak and sorrow and solitude,

The Voice listened in turn but the meaning

Of its own understanding

Became no clearer, until at last

The Winter Queen broke through her self restraint

And sang,

Her voice rose like snowflakes in a gale

Beautiful and powerful and turbulent

Joining with the smooth shining splendor

Of Jarel Frost

And the ringing purity of the Voice,

The Winter Queen and Jarel Frost sang

Of the utter desolation of solitude

Of the heartbreak of loved ones lost

To space and time

And the Voice shivered,

Jarel Frost fell back to a harmony

The Winter Queen rose up like a storm

Singing with all the despair of centuries

Of being trapped by belief and fate

Confined to walk the snow laden cold,

For no more could she run through fields of flowers

No more to nap in the summer sun

She was confined to the realms of Winter

Of the cold and dark alone

Captive to belief,

They believed she was the Queen of Winter

And so she had but to step upon

The sun-warmed grass so green

To disappear in a puff of steam

Wiped from existence,

For a season, gone for the summer

Only to return with the first snow

Year after year, unless

She stayed apart for summer months

Alone in the eternally frozen North,

She conveyed the terror and desperation

The numbing loneliness

Of a trapped existence

In the cold and dark

And the Voice cracked once,

Now she faded back to a low harmony

Jarel Frost rose back to sing his piece

Turning away from the dark themes

He remembered brighter days

And sang of freedom,

Of his innocent youth

When he could run in winter

Across the churning ocean

Ice under his every footstep

His father the North Wind at hand,

Of the time when his grief for his mother had passed

When he roamed the vast North alone

Heartbroken, with nothing to anchor him

Adrift like a piece of down

Not even constrained to his father’s domain,

Of long centuries as a wandering bard

Free to meander through forest

And over tundra’s wild and free

With no need to fear storm or frost

For they were his own,

Now the Voice cracked again

And the meaning of its song

Took up a new turn

As it remembered

A life it had forgotten,

Before the mind-breaking isolation

Before it was trapped in this strange place

Full of frozen water and physical constraints

It had roamed the universe wild and free

It had known, what it couldn’t remember,

Things blurred again and the Voice shook

The tundra shivered and rolled

Jarel Frost stopped singing took the Winter Queen’s hand

She met his eyes and spoke:

“My name was Aina.”

He smiled and bowed over her hand

“It is a pleasure to know you Aina.

My name is Jarel.

May I have this dance?”

Aina looked around in astonishment and then smiled,

“You most certainly may.”

The Voice howled as they danced

Over the tumultuous tundra

As all their conversations coalesced about them

Leaving a simple realization,

That they were no longer alone

And need never be again

A conclusion that brought with it

The memory of a half-forgotten emotion

That flared now between them,

Brighter and with more potential

Than they had ever known before

Bringing with it warmth

Stronger than ever it had been

In their bygone mortal days,

And as the heat rose between them

The Voice grew quiet as it listened to their hearts

Remembering that which had been driven from its mind

By the madness of this strange world

Recognizing the song in their hearts, as love.

Wrapped up in each other Jarel and Aina

Barely realized that the world had settled back into stillness

Until the whole world held its breath

As the Voice sang again

Filling the world with bright piercing joy,

The Voice spun a melody of starlight and love

And before their glowing eyes

A dark comet shot up from the shadow

Streaking for the sky

Into the space between the stars.