She awoke in the dark, separated from the night sky only by a thin and permeable cloth. She could feel the stars singing out in the dark and laid wrapped up and warm in her flimsy shelter until dawn light shaded the sky. The grass was jewelled with morning dew and mist lay on the ground like an ethereal cloak.

I lay nestled and protected between high sumptuous bosky slopes, where honey sunshine drips through the tree branches weaving their magic, to dapple my sacred waters. I am a nexus in the winding path of this bright and sparkling river that murmurs and sings with prayers of wide skies, Atlantic winds and flowering gorse.

Once there was a woman that wanted to sail to the other side of the wind. Whenever the wind blew, it blew her away, and no matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t fight her way through to the other side. When the wind dropped, she couldn’t find it again to try again. 

A lone widow lives deep in the fenlands. She is young and gold-haired with a small girl that reflects the same dreamy strength of her mother. The widow mourns her husband lost this past year, taken by a fever that wracked his body and burned him from the inside out. She lives in a house they built together, raised above the ground that was sometimes earth, sometimes water.

Once there was a shadow woman that lived in the cold, hard mountains. The cruel winds blew her around and the storms would lash her. Just a shadow, she had no weight to hold her down against the onslaught of the fierce gales, thunder and lightning, and they would toss her around the jagged, sharp mountain peaks. When the storms calmed, she drifted without purpose through the frozen land, leaving no trace of herself, touching nothing, and nothing touching her. She was as thin as a breath and was of a darkness made by the absence of light, an ashen, empty darkness, with no rest or respite to fold into.

She sat by her fireplace and warmed her hands against the dancing flames. Her hearth was not particularly old or impressive, just a grate wherein sat the wood and a chimney to lift away the sparks and smoke, but it was hers.

She stood at the edge of the clearing, damp earth and glass raindrops filling her lungs. The trees stood tall, dark and silent, impenetrable and waiting. She hung back on the edge for a while, savouring the threshold, drawing out the seconds into eternity. She could feel rather than see the red does that drifted through the mist, cloven hoof barely touching the deep, exquisite forest floor. 

She waits by the small fire. The air is warm and the breeze is scented with wildflowers as it blows between the trees. The NANÎ waits, as she has for days. Her shawl is on the earth and her arms are bare in the sunshine. A smile plays about her lips, her joints ache less in the summer. The sun is shining and the flames of the small fire are almost invisible. The old woman fingers her string of amber beads, passing the well-worn smooth rounds through her fingers as she whispers quiet words of power. Then she hears it; the first.