This time of year, the days are shorter, and the nights seem endless. Its so cool, sometimes you almost feel like you should shelter yourself from the night air. Even the days seem safe, the air unthreatening, barely do you even sweat. You might even forget the rest of the year, when it is best you take to the caves or the ruins when the Sun comes through, like everything else does. There was a name for this time of year, if I remember right, they used to call it Winter. They say it was so so cool… they had to have another name for it… Frost. They say the air was cool enough to make your skin afraid, if you exposed yourself to it. But not like the way the Summer Winds can burn you, more like you’d start shaking… and wouldn’t know how to stop it. They say the Frost made the rain light enough to float, turning it into a white powder, and it was called Snow. Such a beautiful name, so soft, so gentle, so easy, to even imagine it seems like a miracle. It would blanket the land, keeping it cool, and the enormous plants called trees, which had leaves like needles. For months, the Snow would shelter them from the heat and the Sun. They say that the Frost was so cool, it would make the water turn stiff like stone, and they would call it Ice. Of course, most of the water was on the surface back then, not underground like now. It even ran down over the mountains, if you can imagine that. Rain was more common too, in some places it might even rain through half the year.

In the times before, so long ago, people made their own light. A light with no heat, so bright it seemed like day all the time. So bright, they stopped looking up, and they barely ever took notice of the sky. They say that once, so long ago one could barely imagine a number to define the days between, there were countless lights shimmering in the dark of the night sky. These Stars, formed patterned if you looked at them long enough, and could guide your way through the dark. But no one noticed when they started to vanish, until one day people started looking up again. There were only a few scattered here and there, and every year there were less, until finally none were left. Only the Sun and the Moon remained in the sky. Some say, the Stars were other Suns, so far away they appeared like pinholes of light. Other say they were the eyes of the countless gods which once looked over us, until they tired of us and chose to look no more. None of that matters now… I guess.

For three nights, every 25 days or so, the night is an everlasting black. Even the moon turns away from us. The Eye of the Sleepy Goddess, slowly closing, and opening, and closing again, until one day it simply opens no more. We wait watching the night sky every 26th, 27th, and 28th day, begging the Moon to return… hoping she does not abandon us. Most people believe the Stars must have been like the Moon, but since no one paid enough attention, no one sung to them, or cried out to them, they simply fell into a deep slumber. It seems more reasonable than to imagine they were like the Sun. How cruel might such a sky have been, with no haven from the heat of thousands of Suns.

Yes, these are the longest nights. Unending nights, where we know we are not alone only through the voices we hear ringing out across the night air. A time of year when the day which torments us, has become our haven… for just a little while. Though even its brightness could scorch our eyes. So when the Moon has forgotten us, sing out to her, beg her to return to us, for she is our last gentle light in the empty darkness. Know that it is her favor which spares us from the Mourning World, the world of light and flames. Do not be fooled by the Winter Sun, which seems generous and sparing, for we are the children of the night. This is the time that we remember, so that we are not forgotten. So that our sleeping goddess dreams well of us, and remembers that we are waiting. So that the Mother of the Night Sky may rejoice that she is loved, and return to us again as she has done so many times before. Sing to her in all her names, confess to her your secrets, and be known to her that she may love us. Less we be lost in darkness followed only by fire, for all time.