Suenyaverse - The Twelve Nights - Beginnings

The Story of the Twelve Nights

                Each year, the people of Suenya—and indeed, all nations and peoples under the care of Lit—celebrate the Twelve Nights. Set aside from the rest of the year by being their own month, the Twelve Nights take place in midwinter, and are full of feasting, gifts, and family. The people of the plane of Earth might compare the celebrations to a mixture of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

                This is the legend behind that celebration.

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                Long ago, high in a mountain, there was a village of yetis who made their homes upon the slippery, rocky soil. The stony mountain ground did not yield well to crops, and the nearby river was so steep and fast, only very hardy fish could make their living within it. But the village was situated on a pass which many traders needed to pass through, and in exchange for providing the traders will shelter, the merchants brought many wonderful goods to the town. It made up heartily for the yeti having few resources of their own.

                Among these yeti was one young yeti-woman named Ayedi. At the beginning of that particular year, she had gotten married, and she and her new husband soon learned they were expecting a child. They were overjoyed at the prospect of their first little one, and set about preparing their home for the baby. Eagerly, they waited each day for news of traders coming in from the pass, so that they could furnish their home for the child.

                However, as the year wore on and the weather grew worse, it became clear no traders would come their way. A snowstorm got lost on its way to winter and ended up smack dab in the middle of autumn, blanketing the town in snow. The pass became treacherous, and what merchants were traveling steered their steeds away from the slick ice and frost-shorn rocks. The town’s few farms were crippled by the frost, and the icy chill ate away at their crops, withered the plants, and reduced the fruit to frostbitten mush. The town was not completely at a loss, for strong, summer-fattened fish still swam in the river, but spawning season would soon come to an end. They would need the trader’s salt to keep the fish for winter, and what they had harvested so far from their crops could not be kept until winter. Another early frost could destroy their livelihood entirely.

                All of the yeti were concerned, but Ayedi and her husband most of all. The child made her hungrier than ever, and should she begin to starve, her body would take her child from her before anything became of her. The child began to kick, and it seemed to lash out in time with her hunger pangs.

                She fought to eat what she could, carefully rationing her food even as the fruit began to wrinkle and insects began to worm into the flour, until she could take it no longer. In the midst of one meager meal, she burst, and shouted to the ceiling of their hut.

                “This is absurd! We have almost no food! I’m not going to sit here while the others debate over what to do! I’m going out into the forest to forage for myself!”

                Her husband begged and pleaded with her not to leave, and entreated with her to think of their child. He motioned towards her burgeoning abdomen. She planted a kiss on his forehead and told him she would be all right: She had been tramping up and down the mountainside since she was but a tiny yetling herself, and in far more fragile conditions. (She had climbed over a mile with a broken leg, once, after falling out of a tree.) She did not plan to look too far, but perhaps in a few places the others had not thought to forage yet. So, with a skein of water slung over her back, she set out to find food.

                She wandered over the back of the mountain for many hours. She had not expected to tire so quickly. Her endurance did not hold out with the child weighing on her. Frequently, she stopped to rest and look up through the trees. Her eyes scanned the bushes she passed, and they wandered through the leaves of the trees above, but nothing remained. No fruit, no berries, no anything. Tired, with an empty stomach, throbbing, swollen feet, and a heart full of sorrow, she took one last rest and prepared to head back to her village.

                As she sat, an icy wind drifted over her face. Despite its chill, it brought with it the spicy smell of wood smoke. Was someone traveling? She was still quite close to the village, and it pained her to think of some poor traveler weathering the blisteringly-cold night when shelter was so close at hand. She creaked to her feet and set off following the scent of smoke. She could, at the very least, lead this person to her village.

                She squeezed around the trees in pursuit of the fire. She came to a place where the trunks clustered thickest. Her round belly barely fit through the cracks. Still, she found one place where the trunks were slightly wider, and wiggled past them.

                She found herself in a clearing. The sight within stopped her dead in her tracks.

                Dead center in the clearing, an enormous tree, with great, sprawling branches, sprung from the earth. In the rest of the forest, the air was frigid, but ultimately dry. This tree, however, had mounds of snow piled up around its roots, with picturesque footprints of birds and small animals crisscrossing it. Rounded lumps of snow swayed on the branches, but neither trickled nor fell. Ayedi crept toward the tree, and her eyes caught on a brilliant red orb, glowing beneath one branch. It was an apple, dark and rich, encased in a perfect sphere of sparklingly clear ice.

                The fire lay beneath the tree, and a woman, sitting on a log, tended to it. Fascinated by the ice-robed apple, Ayedi paid her little heed until the woman delicately cleared her voice. Ayedi’s trance was broken, and she whipped around. Her eyes locked with the woman’s.

                Only the left one resembled what Ayedi thought eyes should look like. The right eye was a translucent, sun-catching, vast expanse of blue nothing, sitting placidly inside the woman’s eye socket.

                The woman beckoned Ayedi closer, towards her fire, and a space next to her on the log. Ayedi shuffled over and sat. The woman had long, expressive ears like those of elves, and they drooped with relaxation. She brushed at the white tufts of fur behind them. “Would you like one?” she said.

                Ayedi had thought the branches too far overhead, but the woman reached up and plucked one of the ice-coated apples from directly above them. She lifted a long stick from the snow beside them, and with one swift motion, speared the frozen apple through. She offered it to Ayedi, and, warily, Ayedi took it. She stared at the cracked, icy crust over the apple while the woman prepared her own fruit. She stuck it over the fire, and the melting ice popped and hissed into the flames. The eyeless blue eye bored into Ayedi, and she hastily thrust her apple into the flames.

                The ice evaporated from both fruit. The skin began to swell and crack, and sweet-smelling steam burst forth from the tight red flesh. The woman pulled back her apple and bit into the hot, steaming skin. She chewed with closed eyes and an expansive grin.

                Ayedi glanced over her own fruit. Although lovely, she knew from experience how destructive a crust of ice could be on a plant. She closed her own eyes, and sunk her teeth into the dried, shriveled flesh.

                Except, of course, it wasn’t dry and shriveled at all! Delectable hot apple burst into her mouth, juicy and mushy and exploding with rich flavor. Aghast, she swallowed, and for a moment she could only stare. Then she dived back into the fruit, sweet and fine as if it were fresh off the tree. Which it was, of course, but it had been covered in ice! Surely that should have destroyed it, and the tree besides?

                The thin cape at the woman’s back fluttered, but the wind was still. She slid the remains of the apple’s core off the stick, and wiped it in the snow. “Did you like it?” she asked. Ayedi’s mouth was still full, so she nodded. The woman looked near her feet. “Would you like something else?”

                Ayedi did not want to linger and frighten her husband, but she had walked so far, and the babe was so heavy, she needed something to revitalize her. She swallowed and responded. “I... yes. Thank you.”

                “Do you like fish?” the woman asked. A foot, clad in black leather, shout out from beneath her robe and brushed away the snow. Ayedi stared at it, and the light that flecked off the claw-like silver studs at the toe. The snow scraped away in rivulets, revealing a block of ice buried beneath. The woman sunk the long fingernails on her hairy hands into cracks in the ice, and hefted the block to the surface.

                A rather startled-looking fish, mouth agape, stared at Ayedi from the center of the block. Ayedi’s eyes ran down the length of its flank, and she nearly fell backwards on the log. The fish was a malsin! Although malsin were found in the nearby river, it was only during their spawning season. At that time of year, all the young malsin were long gone, out to the depths of the distant sea, where they would remain until the next year. Once or twice, a trader would come late in the year with strips of salt-flavored dry malsin caught at sea, but this fish had clearly been plucked from the waters themselves.

                The woman’s one eye looked almost wryly at Ayedi. She placed the block on a hot stone by the fire to thaw it. When the ice fell away, she took a stone knife to the scales and stomach, cleaned and gutted it, and left two perfect halves of its body to sizzle up near the fire. The stone cackled and squealed with fat, and Ayedi herself almost wanted to giggle along with it. When it had cooked up, flaky and fine, the woman stuck it with her knife and offered it to Ayedi.

                The flesh was softer and more tender than the older, heartier fish she had seen fished up from their rivers. The faintest hint of brine flavored it. Ayedi picked out the bones and devoured one entire flank.

                The woman held up the second half, but Ayedi turned away. “Oh... I couldn’t. What would you eat? I can’t take your portion.”

                “You need it more than I do,” the woman said. “You have your little one to think of. Please, eat up, and enjoy.”

                Ayedi shifted restlessly, but the woman’s smile fell on her—as always, from beneath that blank blue eye. Ayedi devoured it twice as swiftly. She daubed juices from the side of her mouth with the fur on her arm. She felt the grease along her lips, and turned away to pat herself clean.

                The woman folded her clawed hands in her lap. “Have you enjoyed the food I have shared with you today?”

                The second helping burned in Ayedi’s stomach. “I—yes, of course I have. It—it was most generous of you to share with me. But surely you would want to—“

                The woman reached out, and pressed a finger across Ayedi’s lips. “Then you shall eat this way always.”

                The woman reached up towards her eye. One claw lifted her eyelid, and the other dug in behind it. Ayedi shrieked and looked away. The cavity squelched and slurped as the woman’s fingers probed it. Ayedi shielded her face until the sounds stopped.

                Stop they did, however, and Ayedi felt a strange, soft glow over her arms. She dared to look. The woman’s hands were out to her. The blue eye rested in the middle of it. It was a perfect, round drop of rippled blue ice. The color was richer than the sky at midday, and glimmered with teasing reflections and entrapped waves. The woman proffered it towards Ayedi. Her right eye was whole as it should be, with no indication it had ever been otherwise. Ayedi’s head swam in the growing brightness, and she felt herself growing dizzy. Sometimes, when she blinked, the woman seemed to have four eyes too many.

                “Take it,” the woman said. Ayedi’s hand hesitated over hers. Her padded fingertips tested the surface of the ice. Not only was it dry, it was also warm. She palmed it, and when she rolled it between her hands, it did not melt.

                “It is glass,” she said. “The secret treasure of the dragons. Except for this one—it is my treasure alone. But I have grown tired of keeping it to myself, so I am giving it to you. To share.”

                Ayedi rolled the glass between her palms. It grew warmer beneath her touch, and something seemed to spark against her fingertips. “But I—what is—?”

                The eyes of the woman silenced her (and Ayedi so dearly needed to lie down, because the woman certainly could not have had six of them). “Focus on the liquid moving through your body—the spittle in your mouth, the sweat of your brow, the bile in your stomach. Focus, and think back to this day and this meal, and see the ice encircling the fruit. Drive the heat from the air with your will. Call the moisture to you. Drive that force through the heart of this glass, and you will be able to freeze anything.”

                “But the frost destroys our crops—!”

                “But did you not taste for yourself, today, a frozen apple as rich as a fresh one? Did you not savor a fish caught on a far-distant shore? A slow freeze will kill a plant, but keep your fruit and meat cold, and it will stave off rot. That chill which makes you so hungry in winter is the key to your salvation.”

                Ayedi thrust out the stone. “And you say this stone will make ice for me? How am I to believe you?”

                The woman strode to the edge of the snow. She put one scaly black foot in the snow, and one in the sun-warmed leaf litter beside it. She spread her arms, half in winter and half in autumn. “You see this power before you, yet you deny it. But the stone will not make ice for you. It will help you make ice for yourself. The stone will help you focus your power, but the talent is within you alone, Ayedi.”

                Ayedi did not notice the woman call her by name. “What do you want me to do, then? Make ice for the whole village by myself?!”

                “For now, regrettably, yes,” the woman nodded. “But your people need not go hungry this winter, Ayedi. And when the spring comes, and the dragons come through, ask them to make you glass. Not just any glass—fine blue glass, such as this. They will know how to make it so.” All three of the illusory eyes on the woman’s left side winked. “There are those among you with talents, and you are among them. But with this stone, those talents will grow and flourish.”

                Ayedi stumbled forward to ask her more questions, but the woman—and all of her snow and ice, and her fire—were gone. All that remained was a single beam of autumn light, piercing through the treetops and falling upon the clearing where the icy tree had once been.

                Ayedi turned around to leave, and found herself staring at a familiar cottage near the outskirts of her village. She scratched her head as she walked back into town, one hand cradling her new treasure.

                It took many tries, but Ayedi quickly came to master the gift given to her by the enigmatic woman. The village was able to hunt and fish to excess that year, and preserve many of their extra crops. Ayedi’s child was born at midwinter, and so great were the stockpiles of food remaining, and so gracious were the villagers, a great feast was held in her honor. The food lasted for twelve days straight, and twelve nights of raucous eating, laughing, and merrymaking. And in the spring, when the dragons came? Every yeti in town was soon in possession of a blue charm, infused with the essence of water by the dragon’s secret techniques. The dragons carried with them knowledge of the yeti who had learned to make ice, and carried her words far and wide. Ayedi’s daughter, too, learned the ways of ice, and when she grew, she traveled, to teach others the ways of Water.

                It is thanks to Ayedi’s gift that we today are able to preserve food. Each winter, at the end of the year, we celebrate as her people did: With Twelve Nights of feasting and revelry. But as we enjoy the company of our family and friends, let us remember where it all began. Were it not for Ayedi and her mysterious benefactor, we would still be at winter’s mercy.

                Of course, though the woman never revealed her name to Ayedi, everyone has their own guesses as to who it was. I know who I think it was. What do you think?