6th Day of Yuletide

The merrier festivities had wound down on another festive gathering in the long winter night and the storytellers were taking over.  The owls re-fluffed their feathers, there had been some excitement earlier with a snow-devil, and the foxes yawned and tucked their tails about themselves.  The storyteller smiled and picked up his pipes, a beautiful work of magic wrought of ice, unmelting.  He played a few hesitant notes, as if footsteps drawing nearer in the dark, and then picked up a cautious and hauntingly beautiful tune full of wist and caution and both hope and fear of the unknown.  Even immortals fear.  “I take you now back to the dark cavern where two souls were at last aware of the other, but only in the most obscure of senses.”

Meeting in a Cavern

The wind howled like a heartbroken demon outside

Flinging a massive winter storm about

Surrounding the tranquil cave at a distance

Whilst inside it was still and dark

The only sound quiet breathing,

And two sets of footsteps

Soft as snowflakes on the rocky cavern floor

Drawing closer, hesitantly, circling

Two strangers warily coming together

In the shattered aftermath of parallel paths,

It was the bard who broke the stalemate

“I am Jarel Frost and I seek the voice

That haunts the darkness with woe.”

It had occurred to him that a stranger in this place

Might well be that lonely soul,

The other paused in her circling and drew herself together

“I am called the Winter Queen,” she replied with cold certainty

Hesitating for a moment she resumed her slantwise approach

“I too seek a voice that haunts the winter night

“A lonely haunted voice.”

And while Jarel Frost was now assured

That hers was not the voice he heard

He thought he heard an undertone

That matched the wild loneliness

Of that haunted soul,

The Winter Queen was not so sure

For while his was not the lead voice

She thought it might, just perhaps

Be the source of the harmony

That had lifted the voice high,

Neither spoke of their suspicions

But as the storm raged about

They stayed together snug and safe

Choosing company over

The terrifying glory of the storm,

As they spoke of weather and other superficial drivel

That held far more meaning than either would admit

At least just yet

They found themselves moving closer in the darkness

Taking comfort in each other’s voice and breathe,

But as of yet the thought was merely fleeting

A faint sense of wistfulness not yet coherent

An echo of regret they barely realized

That as they drew closer without touching

There was no heat to share.

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.

Warmth

Warmth, that lovely feeling

That suffuses the summer

Borne by brilliant sunshine

Transforming air and stone,

In springtime it is welcome

Its return cherished

As it guarantees the return

Of life,

In autumn it is held close

Against the coming chill

Slipping through our fingers

Leaving our toes to cool,

Such is the warmth of sunshine

Waxing and waning with seasons

Taken for granted in its presence

Longed for in its absence,

When the days turn cold

There are other sources

Burning bright and proud

Fire is praised by many,

The hearthfire that warms the house

The bonfire that lights up the night

The lantern that guides us home

The candle that warms our heart,

There are many forms of warmth

Those for body, those for soul, those for heart

Those whose gifts cross boundaries

From physical to intangible,

The fire that heats the air and cheers the heart

The lantern that warms the hands and brings hope

The stove that cooks dinner and symbolizes home

The candle that holds back the dark and cold,

There is an intangible warmth

That shines brighter than all the rest

That needs no material base

Merely responsive hearts,

The gentle heat of family

That is stable as the stove

Warming the hearth and home

Providing safe harbor,

There is the bright flash of friendship

A candelabra that flares with synergy

When it is not shining

A steady stream of welcoming photons,

There are complex constructs

Of all of the above

That together warm body, heart, and soul

For the greatest warmth of all, is love.

4th Day of Yuletide

The prevalent sounds about the gathering were the shush of snow falling and the crackle of the fire rising.  A kitsune jumped on a particularly fat snow flake and then looked up shaking snow off his white face disgruntledly.  The black ravens began to turn white while the white ravens ruffled their feathers smugly.  The bard picked up a goat horn and blew a long note out across the tundra.  Drawing breathe he cast a sequence of faster and faster notes into the air and the snow seemed to pick up its pace as it fell, until he stopped, and all the world went still.  “For all that our travelers were closer than many of the others that had resonated with the Voice’s song they still had a long, long, way to go.”

Traveling Alone

Snow lay in monumental drifts throughout the forest

Shaping the world with its own shifting topography

Misleading crusts that dumped the unwary

Into piles of powder as deep as themselves

Or sticky, pokey, tree wells,

The wary, the clever, and the cursed or blessed

Were gifted to walk the surface

Never to fall in

They strode across the crest of the drifts

And down into the vales of white,

Jarel Frost whistled as he walked

And all the little songbirds

That dared the northern winter

Came flitting through the trees

Adding their high voices to his song,

The Winter Queen glided

Her skirts erasing her faint footmarks

The wind dusting snow across her trail

As she traversed a different stretch of forest

In silence,

For Jarel the birds were a fleeting joy

A brief brightness in his solitude

He conjured up his pipes

And played them a merry tune

Quickening their foraging,

For the Winter Queen it was a peaceful time

Twitter birds avoided her, yes, such was the season

But there were no humans to plague her with emotions

A graceful lynx passed by at a distance

As silent as she,

When the birds had left for better foraging

When the lynx was no more than a memory in the snow

The hollows of solitude were empty once more

And the memory of music drove them mercilessly

Deeper into the winter night,

As the moon waxed from new dark to a bright first quarter

The travelers continued along parallel paths

That seemed to promise to stretch into infinity

In the endless dark of a soul chilling winter

Without ever meeting.

3rd Day of Yuletide 2019

Cold lay heavily across the land and the snow fell thick in the darkness of winter.  Closing in on solstice the moon had shone bright in the absence of the sun for more than a full cycle now.  Even some of the cold hardy folk who gathered to celebrate on the open tundra drew their cloaks in tight and snuggled in close to each other.  The snow owls and ravens joined the phoenix on the Ice Dragon’s back to his amusement as they edged in closer to her fiery warmth.  The bard smiled at the woman in white who left her head bare to the falling snow.  Smiling back she tucked her hair behind her exposed ears and watched as he picked up his fiddle.  The audience settled expectantly and he startled them by breaking into a jig.  A snow maiden leaped up and grabbed one of the North Wind’s gentler cousins by the hand and they started an impromptu dance circle.  The bard smiled and nodded and played another few energetic folk tunes and then he segued into a delicate piece with the sound of spring to it and the dancers fell back down with a huff of laughter into the audience.  From there he wandered into a melancholic piece and the white woman’s smile turned bitter and ironic until he set his fiddle down.  “The next character I bring to you was born to mortals, a situation that brought blessings and curses in equal measure because she became both revered and feared as a Winter Queen.”

The Winter Queen

The vibrations of that haunted voice

And of the strong harmony that had joined it

Fled, leaving the night air still once more

Leaving the Winter Queen to crumple in its absence

To the ground of her wintery realm.

Emotions wracked her with shocking fury

That she had thought long frozen in the past

The heart she had sealed up with ice

With the elemental purity of winter

Began to crack.

Memories leaked back in, no longer held at bay

Of a time long, long ago, and a place not far enough away

When she was but a carefree mortal youth

Of the reindeer herder folk

Free to laugh, to love, to play,

If the snow fell a little thicker

When her child-self frolicked

It was brushed off and ignored

As a change in time

Even as her bright eyes adored it,

Her bright eyes of uncommon blue

The shade of a clear winter sky

As unusual as the pale blond

Of her long and silky hair

Unlike her earthy parents,

But her parents loved her and she loved them

And all was bright and light and fair

Until she came of age

When the turbulence of emotion struck

Thunder cracked, lightning split the skies,

And hail struck the reindeer herder’s camp

A freezing cold killed the flowers in their bloom

And a terrified mortal youth fled

Out across the tundra to keep her people safe

Summer died in her wake.

All that summer she struggled and strove

To pull her power under her control

To quell her wayward emotions

So that she could return home

Without bringing death,

At last as the frost nipped the air

She obtained a semblance of balance

Demonstrating to satisfaction

The ability to hold back her powers

And to direct them as she desired, mostly,

But when she returned to her people

She found them changed

No longer did they view her as some carefree youth

But with wariness and enough uncommon courtesy

To make her cry,

In desperation she orchestrated a demonstration

An arrangement of ice sculptures

That left the Autumn flowers in bloom

A fall of snow gentle and soft

That melted swiftly and surely,

But all that did was put respect in their eyes

It did not, could not, thaw their wariness

The girls no longer pulled her aside to giggle

The boys cut off their courtships

Though she was fair and kind as ever,

Only her parents still approached her with love

Only they looked past her power and wintery coloring

To see the girl within

But they could not stop the village’s change

No more than a howling blizzard,

As the years turned the girl grew in power and wisdom

She held the worst of the storms at bay

She sculpted the snowbanks into ideal insulation

She found lost reindeer and children in the snow

Displaying great power and kindness,

But she was cold, so cold

For even the children kept their distance

Held back by well-meaning hands

She wept in the darkness

And took to wandering far afield,

When her parents in their age died

She took her grief far into the North

To fling it at the vast ice sheets

There storms raged and ice mountains cracked

Their fury visible at such a distance as to become legend,

And it was many long years before she returned

To take up guardianship over her village again

They rejoiced at her return but time had worked its magic

They had built her into a myth in her absence

And now they called her their Winter Queen.

As the decades turned she remained smooth skinned and spry

The brilliance never faded from her eyes

The only change a weary wisdom

And the transformation of her pale hair

From blond to snow white,

One spring, when all her generation had gone

To the bright fields of the great beyond

She stepped off the snow onto a patch of green

Inhaling the sweet fragrance of flowers

And vanished.

Through the long summer the people worried

Though some were secretly relieved

They tended their herds

They went about their lives

But somewhere in their minds they waited,

Half expectant though they wouldn’t have said so

After all her disappearances before

After all the generations of her presence

They almost thought she would return with the snow

And she did,

She did and she wept for she knew

That there was no easy rest for her

Her people’s belief had raised her to godhood

Her mortal frailty was stripped from her

Leaving her to the embrace of winter,

She could wander the fields of snow

Could dance naked under the midday moon

On the vast sheets of cracking sea ice

And never die, consigned to eternity

Alive but always alone.

The Voice’s haunted loneliness

Filled the hollow in her heart with longing

Even as the mysterious harmony

Raised a weary curiosity

Uncrumpling she straightened, and stepped North.

2nd Day of Yuletide 2019

Frost patterned the sod around the fire and the flames flickered in a mischievous breeze.  The owls ruffled their feathers indignantly and the Northwind and his lady chuckled.  The ice dragon puffed out a cloud of ice particles.  This time there was a sense of merriment around the fire, remnant of an earlier entertainment or subconscious of some other undercurrent they couldn’t have told, though some of them had an inkling.  Still, they settled into admirable quiet when the bard took up his lyre.  “The Voice that sang so hauntingly had set off a quest unwitting, and so it falls to me now to introduce the main characters.  One you have met already, the Voice.  Next I shall bring to you, Jarel Frost.”  Many of the audience suppressed a smile as the bard set finger to lyre, and this time he played as he spoke.

Jarel Frost

As the voice twinkled into silence

Disappearing note by note

Leaving the memory of aching beauty

Such as stars giving way to day will

Jarel Frost released his own tune leaving the air unspun.

He was born ages past to an unusual pair

The North Wind incarnate, and

A mortal bard of tundra and wood

Her lovely dark skin and midnight hair surpassed

By the beauty in her voice,

No fickle fancy or fleeting whim

Their love was true and lasting

A warmth to wrap around their son

Whose fair features and long sweep of pale hair

Bore the mark of his immortal father,

Likewise, his ice blue eyes

The wind and frost that danced to his command

And the semi-eternal flame of his life

Whilst from his mother came

Nimble fingers and breathtaking voice,

The gift of music

A mortal creation of art worthy of gods

Marked by a streak of black in his hair

By a vibrant desire for life

Courtesy of the knowledge of endings,

This dual heritage left him neither here nor there

Too mortal quick for the gods of old

Too striking and powerful for his mother’s kin

Though beloved by both for his art

He was doomed to wander alone.

Alone he felt the silence wrap around him

Waiting, expectant, to be filled

But at last, not by him

A vibrant curiosity was awakened

He uncurled, taking his first step north.

1st Day of Yuletide 2019

The very air held its breath, the winter wind held in check, and snow settled softly with barely a whisper on the tundra.  A fire blazed proud in a circle of sod at the center of a winter gathering in the darkest month.  About it hardy creatures of the North gathered to celebrate the coming solstice.  Arctic foxes and snowy kitsunes, snowy owls and icebirds with elegant plumes of frosty feathers.  Great bears blended in with the snowdrifts blinking sleepily.  Snow cats padded softly around settling as they saw fit.  Ravens perched as they would, black and white alike.  The North Wind swirled softly near the edge of the light with the spirit of a bard dark and lovely in his embrace a smile on her lips.  Ice demons quelled their violent habits to join the peace accord for the festivities.  A woman dressed all in white sat near the fire her feet tucked neatly under her skirts.  Around the perimeter a great snow dragon curled in a half circle with a phoenix perched between his wings.  The aurora borealis shimmered overhead against a backdrop of twinkling stars.  Sitting cross legged before the fire a tall man with long white that brushed the snow raised a flute to his lips.  A haunting tune rang across the tundra.  Tucking away his flute he spoke.  “Not so long ago, on this very tundra, a lost soul cried out to the world.”

The Voice

Piercing the winter’s night with its brilliance

A voice tuned the darkness to its minor chord

Haunting the space between ground and sky

Reverberating through shadow and fleeing light

Holding the air captive with its plea.

Its aching melody wound around the cold

Wafting with it forth from the North

Over tundra hushed with snow

Through forests twisted by time

It moved south across the world.

Its melancholy touched others in their loneliness

Where they had withdrawn into shadowed solitude

In forests thick and tundra vast and deserts barren

They resonated as many, as one

They turned North, and listened.

Jinni in their sand swept deserts

Heard the whispers in the cold night wind

Pulling shawls about themselves

They turned away

Not for them the frigid North.

A poet in his cavern dark

Felt the dark notes touch his soul and shivered

Knowing temptation could be his death

He delved deeper towards another mystery

Not for him the treacherous land above.

A heartbroken lover left alone

Was lifted by the beauty in the song

Too late to stop her fateful plan to follow

As she threw herself at death

Not for her the quests of the living.

An isolated queen of winter

Shook with the vibrations of that lonely voice

Felt its echoes as aftershocks in her own soul

Her past had made her a compass needle

Her will would make her fly.

A demigod of frost and music

Hummed a quiet harmony

Syncing into rhythm and understanding

Purer than he had ever known

He lifted his voice in song.