Once there was a woman named Sirasta. She lived in a camp at the edge of the great Arctic forest and during the summer the sun never set and during the winter it never rose; and nor did the crystalline snow melt. The spirit lights shivered overhead in the long night, the honoured ancestors dancing in celestial light for all eternity. It was a good and wild land that tested its people and made them strong.

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.

Silent moon, ghost moon, shadow moon. The Dark Moon casts its light on the otherworld and so we can step through to that world. All is permeable now, a rich black sea through which to move and flow. As you are reborn from the primordial waters, the foaming, crashing waves, the world begins to lighten with your darkness. Stars begin to fade into the firmament and the seas turn and bow at your arrival.

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.