Brigid stood and watched the sun sink below the rolling green hills. A cool breeze lifted goosebumps on her skin and she felt the chill of the night reach into the vestiges of the day, and lay them to sleep on the earth. Her red hair blazed like fire and she felt the ancient pull, irresistible as time itself. The age-old dance of light and dark, and as the last of the equinox sun disappeared below the horizon, she knew it was time to leave her gentle, fertile valleys and turn her steps towards the north.

It was a cold hard winter, frost glittered on bare trees and snow blanketed the ground. The people shivered through the short, cold days, burning the wood they had gathered through spring, summer and autumn and eating all the food they had gathered and preserved. The people hated the winter, how dark and bleak it was. They hated that their supplies dwindled and that they couldn’t go swimming, running or riding. They hated the storms and blizzards, the rivers running in spate or freezing over. Winters were hard, and this one was the hardest in living memory.