9th Day of Yuletide

The stars were bright and the night was cold but thanks to the encouragement of the phoenix the fire was warm.  Not that many of those around it strictly speaking needed it but it was pleasant all the same.  The world held still and shadows seemed to gather in the outskirts of the firelight.  Jarel Frost picked up a translucent horn made of ice with opaque swirls that formed unrecognizable designs and the whole thing glowed in the firelight as if it was not quite of the world.  He blew a long note that carried across the tundra with the strength of a glacier and the beauty of a snowflake.  Startling his audience he then played a series of short notes that seemed to tinkle as if starlight had been given sound and he cast forth the melody into the night in invitation.  “Every journey must end somewhere and it was no different for our travelers than any other, though if asked they might have said that their journey ended sooner than they expected, much sooner.”

The Source of the Voice

When the stunted Northern forest

Had dwindled to a stripe of green

When the winds that whirled around them

Blew unhindered across the tundra

The clouds departed.

With the clouds clearing away to the horizon

The stars shone clearly upon them

A crescent moon leaving the stars

To shine supreme

With cold, clear, light,

Granting the travelers their very first

Look at each other

By the dim crystalline starlight

They turned their gazes unerringly

Towards each other,

Jarel Frost looked upon the very vision

Of a Winter Queen

She was tall and pale

With sharp yet dainty features

In a dress of sweeping fur-trimmed white,

Yet he could not see her as cold and distant

After all the hours they had talked

He looked closer at her face in the starlight

Seeing faint traces of weariness

In the shadows around her eyes,

Seeing wonder soften her features

As she gazed from him to the stars

Loneliness in the stiffness of her spine

And somehow traces of a delicate beauty

More fitting a flower than a snowflake,

The Winter Queen looked upon a bard

His features were sharp and pale as ice

Yet softened with humanity

His long sweep of ice-white hair

Was graced with a streak of mortal black,

Caught between mortality and immortality

An uneasy place to be as well she knew

She saw the loneliness that haunted his eyes

The wariness behind his front of cheer

And the soft smile as he looked back at her,

Starlight borne revelations were not to cease

From the shadow cast by a snowdrift

Cut crisply by the cool light

Came the haunting melody

Of the Voice.

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.

7th Day of Yuletide

The snow clouds were heavy and low closing the tundra in on itself as cozily as a vast expanse of gently rolling land can be.  Surrounded by drifts of snow the gathering was snug and cheery about their fire as fat warm snowflakes fell from the sky.  The children of a snow maiden and a fox shifter pounced on the falling flakes and rolled down the snow banks upon landing, they hadn’t quite figured out how to plan for after they jumped.  Their parents smiled at them indulgently.  The woman in white caught one kit before she could roll too close to the fire and put her back on her feet smiling.  The kit bowed in cheery gratitude, nearly tumbling over again, and went off to join her brother in pouncing on their father’s tail.  The bard watched the white woman’s smile as it nearly concealed her wistfulness and hid a slightly haunted look of his own by tuning his lute.  Settling in to his snowy seat by the fire he picked out a merry traveling tune on his lute, a repetitious piece that could wind over hill and over ice floe, if he let it.  “As all storms will this one came to pass and the travelers were faced with a decision.  A decision on which rested more than they could know.”

The Decision of a Beginning

The storm reveled in the wild expanse

Of the North with its stunted trees and sprawling tundra

But eventually, with a great clap of thunder

The storm gave a great yawn

And dwindled away.

Slowly the quiet percolated down

Through ice and snow and stone

To the two travelers in the cavern

Conversing in the dark

As time wound on,

They came to realize the existence

Of a new absence

The absence of the storm

And silence fell between them

The time had come to decide,

For each knew the other

Was on the same quest as their self

In search of the voice

That haunted them still

With melancholy that sang in the heart,

Jarel Frost broke the ice with cautious good cheer

“It was a pleasure meeting you.

Now that the storm has passed I will be continuing on.”

“Likewise.”  The Winter Queen replied

“And I too shall resume my query.”

She hesitated, but Jarel did not

He quite liked the sound of her

And, she kept the loneliness at bay

“It would seem dear Winter Queen,

That we are going the same way.”

She started, it had been a long time

Since any had spoken so affectionately

She hesitated to involve herself

But wasn’t that exactly what she sought

A kindred spirit?  And here one was.

“So, it would.  But the way North is both broad

And quite narrow.”

“Shall we take the narrow way?”  He proposed

“I should like that.”

She replied cautiously,

“Then lead on, I believe your entrance

Will make a better exit than mine.”

Jarel Frost gestured grandly

Unseen in the dark

The Winter Queen retraced her steps

Opening the tunnel before them,

Following the snow soft sound

Of her footsteps transitioning from stone to snow

Jarel Frost followed her

Up through a tunnel of delightful cold

Trailing his fingers along the wall of crystalline ice.

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.