The Fourth Day of Yuletide 2021 CE: The Plane of Yeast

 The Plane of Yeast

‘Twas a world of aroma

Born from a single-cellular form of life

Yeast.

The scent of fresh baked bread perfumed the air

Rising in warm thermals

On which golden eagles soared contentedly,

Geysers of meade burst from the stones

Fountaining into the air

Dark amber tones catching the sunlight,

Curtains of mist billowed from the geysers

Weaving low across the landscape

Droplets of the essence of honeyed fruit,

Hotsprings of wine bubbled invitingly

Steeped with spices

That seeped out from the rocks,

Round loves of sourdough

Popped up from the earth like mushrooms

Venting enticing steam,

Croissants hung from the branches of trees

Catching the light on their buttery crusts

Like the most delicious of flaking crescent moons,

Bagels rolled across the landscape

Chased by roly-poly badgers

Across a ground of springy bread crust,

Warm gently steaming lakes

Gave off the savory tang

Of proteinacious miso,

Sweet rolls tumbled off the cliffs

Piling up at their base

Cast off doughy rubble,

Golden clouds drifting overhead

Precipitated out cool drops

Of delicious spiced cider,

And throughout it all

In the bread dough underground and the untapped aquifers of fermenting fruit juice

Were the tenaciously bubbling and dividing yeast.

The Third Day of Yuletide 2021 CE: The Plane of Birch

 Well, Snjokorn had seen trees before, tall spindly trees, short spreading trees, but always they were green or covered in green epiphytes and they were all so bold and sometimes bushy and never quite right.  Until she found herself in the Plane of Birch…

The Plane of Birch

The gentle golden sun shone

On a gently spinning birch bark basket

Revolving in its magnificence around the tranquil sun

The largest birch bark basket

Ever known in the multiverse

‘Twas the the Plane of Birch itself,

Within this tremendous cylinder

Gleaming blinding white on its circuit in space

Lay a world’s worth of bedrock and soil

Rising into mountains

From which sprang forests and groves and woodlands

Of birch,

Paper birch and silver birch

And rare lavender and teal birch

Birch with leaves of gold and silver and green

Rising in pale pillars, slender columns reaching for the skies

Spreading pale branches, delicately, out in the sun

Brushing leaves softly with each other

In a tranquil susurration,

Enchanted Snjokorn found herself

Walking wide-eyed through snow-dusted mountains

Wending through the slender birchwoods

Their paper white bark looked to peel at a breath

Yet their trunks rose undaunted, but never beyond their means

A dainty tree elegantly gracing the mountainside

Frost etched subtle patterns on their bark

And intricate designs on silver wafer leaves

That almost seemed to chime

Just at the edge of hearing

A whisper, a song, not so much out of reach

As filling the background of the universe with beauty,

And Snjokorn knew

That it was these gorgeous white and silver creations

With their quiet black markings

And soft whispers

That belonged in the Plane of Snowflakes

Strung with icicles

Dusted with snow

A forest that would not disrupt

But rather politely merge

In delicate splendour

With the landscape born

From Snjokorn’s heart.

The Second Day of Yuletide 2021 CE: The Plane of Lanterns and Candles

 Snjokorn felt through the darkness around her and wondered if there was any other way to sense the universe beyond sound and touch and knowing.  That very thought sparked something in her and she began to glow.  Light shimmered across the universe refracting rainbows from the now glittering snow and gleaming ice.

For time immeasurable she explored her universe, now lit with light, seeing sights for the first time, and delighting in her sparkling creations.  Alas, there was no light beyond herself, and she found herself wishing for a way to light the landscape for those rare few visitors to her universe.  She concentrated all her thought and grew brighter and brighter and slipped past the weave of her universe and into another.  A plane filled with light!

The Plane of Lanterns and Candles

Gold light, blue light

And other lights besides

Soft lights, bright lights

Shining far and wide,

Trees were hung with lanterns

Casting light through glass and metal

Etching patterns across the landscape

That spun and danced in the wind

Butterflies and flowers

Moons and… snowflakes

But all made of untouchable light,

Candles sprouted from the rocks

Wax flowed like molten lava

Wicks blazing merrily, quietly, dangerously, elegantly

Candles of every mood and color

Filling the world with light,

Even in the caverns deep

Rivers and runnels of wax dripped

Strewn with wicks that burned

And fizzed

Lighting up the deep realms

Far below the surface,

Floating lanterns festooned every water river and lake and sea

Mystic guiding lights drifting far away

Paper lanterns with candles burning bright

Rose into the sky, higher and higher

Turning a lavender sky into a thousand hues,

And oh, how the shadows danced

Patterns etched by the light upon the world

For what was light without darkness

But never was the dark so deep

That one could not see a light, or a dozen, or a thousand

It was a Plane that had no need of stars

For the paper lanterns drifted into space itself

Enscribing patterns far beyond the atmosphere

Moving pictures ebbing and flowing in the celestial sphere.

First Day of Yuletide: The Plane of Snowflakes (Origin)

 

In a vast multiverse filled with potential realized and unrealized lay a little bubble of void. Inside was cold and dark and empty save only for the potential that pervaded the universe. A potential that inexplicably, realizes.

Snjokorn coalesced into existence with its name resonating through its soul, a name that somehow carried a single pure identity, and it knew what must be. Its body formed a six-pointed crystal that grew in perfect symmetry with every molecule that came into being to create its corporeal form, the only form Snjokorn could imagine: a snowflake.

The Plane of Snowflakes

From out the darkness

From out the cold

From out the void infused with potential

Crystallized a single truth: Snowflake.

Within the bubble of space

That delineated this blossoming universe

A single incredible snowflake spun

In perfect symmetry

Growing longer and longer

Branching in every more intricate patterns

A fractal that seemed it would grow until eternity

Until

It stopped

And hung

There

In the center of the bubble of space

The center of the only universe it had known

For a long time

For a short time

For an ineffable time

It existed purely as a six-pointed crystalline structure

In the center of a desolate universe

And then it began spinning faster and faster

It’s delicate branches whipping up the potential of the universe

And expanding it

More snowflakes formed

Smaller, simpler, and more numerous

Until the whole entire universe was filled from edge to edge

With a flurry of snowflakes in every imaginable pattern and size

And then the first snowflake stilled

Realizing it was no longer a singularity

Realizing it had reached a, limit

And that this could not be the end

And the first snowflake took for itself a name

From the word, the concept, the identity, that had rung in its soul

Before ever it had its first thought:

Snjokorn

And it called those creations it had made in its own image snowflakes

Then Snjokorn began to move

Snjokorn returned to the center of its universe and spun and spun

And the snowflakes whirled around it

Snjokorn’s thoughts spread out throughout the universe

Shaping it

The largest snowflake

The one that pushed at the boundaries of the bubble in space

Of the very universe

Began spinning, very gently, and stopped growing, stopped pushing

And the universe swelled out to give the snowflakes room and then stopped

Other snowflakes were growing and settling and spinning

Until the most immense snowflake was stacked with countless others

And layered with others in a nearly infinite variety of patterns and sizes

To form a vast platform in space

Snjokorn began orbiting around it

First one way then another

Until Snjokorn had intimately sensed every snowflake, every pattern

And then Snjokorn chose

And settled in again, this time just to one side of the center of the universe

Just “above” the platform

And Snjokorn called gravity into being

The loose snowflakes began to fall gently towards the platform

And Snjokorn called into being geysers and ice-water and wind

And the Plane of Snowflakes began to take form in earnest…

A long, long, immeasurable time later

Snjokorn swept across her landscape

She had taken brief sojourns into other universes

Into places called Spheres and Planes

And discovered new ideas with which to shape her plane

Her form had progressed with the millenia

Rather than a single snowflake

Her body was now composed of trillions of snowflakes

Shaping her into a magnificent dragon

With a serpent’s body and two arching wings

She had “feathers” modeled after frost

Yet made of layers and layers of snowflakes

Long skinny central snowflakes for shafts

Round, fluffy, snowflakes layered on top for texture

She was her most complicated single creation

She was proud of her work

Proud of her form

Proud of the landscape through which she swept

With its gleaming pillars and flowers and trees of ice

Its clear, still, pools of subfreezing water that froze at a touch

Its glassy lakes

And most of all its snow

Falling, resting, building, rising, flurrying snow

But still she couldn’t settle

She wasn’t done yet

And she was running out of ideas

It was time to step out of her universe again

And search for the missing pieces

In the multiverse beyond…