

When the light from the west just began to crest over the dark spidery fingers of the trees outside the frosted window she woke. The fingers of the trees seemed to reach out to smother the sun, and the tendrils of frost were encroaching on the fragile warmth of the dark room. She no longer slept. It was far to early for this to be of any use to her, she took after her mother that way. Rising before any creature should be moving, only to fall into exhaustion early in the day, before the others, and never reach sleep before it was morning again. She wondered and where this curse came from, and if she should cure it if it could be possible. Was it something sleeping in her brain that prevented the rest the others enjoyed? She said to the frost: How. How do you rest. How do you grow. 

The splintering light from the sun might win in its struggle to pass the barren and black branches of the forest. It seems to swallow the light most mornings, she could not imagine how light go up every day so early to face that abyss. Such a battle, silent and screaming, to cross the path and twist round the branches. Nothing seeing in the forest, nothing to admit defeat and let the light through, just silent screaming sliding shards of light. Through the trees. Through the dark. Driving the stars and their soft cold glow further back. The daylight must be so sharp she thought because of circumstance, not through any fault of its own. It must slice through so many dark lines and slide around such sharp turns to reach the eyes. It is necessity. 

So was her day. By five hours past she should be late enough to begin setting the fires. Fires that danced and played with the darkness, rather than slice it to ribbons to writhe on the floor of the kitchen. Or forest. The fire song called her brother to life. And she sent him back to darkness.
Is it late?
No. Of course its far to early.
Always is.
Sleep.

She sat by the fire. Watching the wood burn, watching this light dance with the dark lines on the wall. Wondering at the difference between the light her and there. Was it in journey that light's very nature could be so distorted? Perhaps it was in arduous travel and trial that light lost its virility and its darkness.  Perhaps the journey takes something fundamental away from everything. The old high branches seemed to have forgotten all but the cloying dark, and these young logs, in her fire, could clearly remember flame, and dance and defined the edges of things. She wondered if her hour or two staring unblinkingly outward changed her eyes, to make the sight of the fire better than it might be. Or to ascribe it intentions it did not have. 



