I press a gentle kiss to the top of Mara's head, breathing in the scent of her hair beneath its hood. She leans into the contact with the same quiet acceptance that's characterized her response to everything clan life has demanded.
Around us, the snow continues to fall, painting the world in shades of white that speak to fresh beginnings and the promise of seasons yet to come.
23
MARA
Iwake to warmth—not just the familiar heat of banked coals in the longhouse hearth, but something softer, more immediate. Nelrish's arm curves around my waist, his chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of someone who's finally learned to sleep without one ear tuned for danger. The pale winter light filtering through the shuttered windows carries a particular quality that makes my pulse quicken with recognition.
Solstice eve. The longest night of the year.
I've been tracking the days with the same meticulous attention my grandmother taught me, marking each sunset against the gradual shortening of daylight until this moment arrived. In the bunkers, we measured time by the dim glow of solar lamps and the rationed meals that divided our underground existence into manageable segments. But here, surrounded by the natural world my grandmother described in whispered stories, I can feel the earth itself holding its breath before the sun's return.
A soft rumble of laughter draws my attention upward, where Nelrish's storm-gray eyes hold an expression I've never seenbefore—something bright and anticipatory that transforms his usually serious features into something almost boyish.
"What?" I murmur, my voice still thick with sleep as I shift in his arms to better study his face.
He shakes his head, that mysterious smile widening as he dips his head to brush his lips against mine. The kiss carries warmth that spreads through my chest like honey, sweet and golden and perfectly fitted to this moment of quiet intimacy before the day begins in earnest.
"Come," he says, his voice roughened by sleep but edged with an excitement that makes my stomach flutter with curiosity. "There's something you need to see."
He coaxes me from the warm nest of furs and blankets, his hands gentle but insistent as he helps me into my clothes with the kind of patient attention that speaks to someone who understands the luxury of unhurried mornings. The air beyond our bed carries winter's bite, but the longhouse feels different somehow—charged with an energy that has nothing to do with temperature.
When I'm finally dressed and my hair braided back from my face, Nelrish takes my hand and leads me toward the main hall. My bare feet find the familiar path across worn floorboards, but even these surfaces feel somehow transformed in ways I can't immediately identify.
Then I see it, and my breath catches in my throat like captured starlight.
The longhouse has been decorated.
Not simply adorned, but transformed into something that might have stepped directly from my grandmother's most vivid stories. Pine boughs drape every beam and doorway, their deep green needles releasing the crisp scent of winter forests into the warm air. Clusters of red berries nestle among the greenerylike drops of captured fire, their bright color providing startling contrast against the dark wood of the walls.
Pinecones hang from leather cords at varying heights, some painted with white markings that catch the firelight like fallen snow. Carved wooden bells—some no larger than my thumb, others big enough to fill my palm—sway gently in the air currents, producing soft musical notes that layer together into something approaching melody.
But it's what I see through the shuttered windows that makes my heart race with recognition so profound it borders on religious experience. Every tree visible from the longhouse wears decorations of its own—ribbons of red and gold tied to winter-bare branches, more carved bells hanging from sturdy limbs, garlands of evergreen boughs wound around trunks like embraces.
"Deck the trees with ribbons red, for warmth and love and daily bread," I whisper, my grandmother's poem falling from my lips like prayer. "And when the morning light returns, the world will know what the winter learns."
My vision blurs with tears I didn't realize were gathering. This isn't just decoration—this is the physical manifestation of stories told in darkness, whispered promises that somewhere beyond the concrete walls and filtered air of underground existence, the world still held space for wonder.
Nelrish's arm slides around my waist, pulling me against his solid warmth as I struggle to process the magnitude of what he's done. This would have taken days of work, careful planning, the coordination of clan members who've never heard my grandmother's stories but trusted their chieftain's vision enough to help bring it to life.
"You remembered," I manage through the tightness in my throat. "Everything I told you about our winter traditions, abouthow my grandmother said we should celebrate the longest night."
"I wanted to give you everything she promised," he says, his voice soft with the kind of tenderness that still surprises me when it surfaces. "Everything you've carried with you all these years."
The simple statement breaks something loose in my chest—not painful, but like the moment when winter ice finally yields to spring warmth. All those years of holding onto fragments of tradition, of whispering my grandmother's poems to Eira in the darkness of underground storage rooms, of marking the passage of seasons I could never see—it was never meaningless preservation. It was preparation for this moment, when someone who loves me would care enough to transform memory into reality.
"Mama?" Eira's sleepy voice drifts from her small alcove, followed by the soft rustle of blankets being pushed aside. "Why does everything smell like winter trees?"
Nelrish releases me to stride toward Eira's sleeping area, his movements carrying the kind of barely contained excitement I've learned to associate with his rare moments of pure joy. When he emerges, she's cradled in his arms, her dark curls wild with sleep and her golden eyes wide with wonder as she takes in the transformed longhouse.
"What is all this?" she breathes, her small hands reaching toward the nearest cluster of bells with the kind of reverent curiosity children reserve for magic made manifest.
"The Longest Night celebration," Nelrish tells her, his voice carrying the ceremonial weight of someone sharing sacred knowledge. "Your mother's grandmother taught her the old ways, and now we honor them together."
Eira's face transforms with understanding that goes beyond her years. She's always been sensitive to the emotional currentsaround her, and the significance of this moment resonates through her empathic abilities like music only she can hear.
"We’ll have a real celebration for the Longest Night," she says, her voice hushed with appropriate reverence. "The ones Grandmother taught me.When the first snow falls on the longest night, when the world grows quiet and the stars grow bright."
