The darkness pressed in on the tomb then.

The newborn crescent moon offered no relief, no radiant beams shining through the empty

branches hanging over them.

There was nothing to reflect off the pure white snow that crunched under their shoe

level as they walked along the path following the curving, barely noticeable trail trodden

between the trees.

The sound of running water pulled them onward.

The roar of the river carried easily through the skeletal forest.

If not for the sliver of light that appeared in the distance as they walked the last

few steps, marking the first sign of the rising sun, they might have slid off the rocky

walls of the gorge and fallen far into the rushing waters below.

That wouldn't have satisfied them in, nor the gods and spirits on whose behalf they

had traveled to the riverbank in the pre-don light of the winter solstice.

That was the only time it could happen, while they stood in the brief space that hung

between night and day.

It had to be this morning on the year's shortest day when night was strongest and day

weakest.

And it had to be here on the lip of the gorge at the ragged roaring gap between the middle

world on which they lived in the underworld below.

The thing had to be done properly, they had to entice the sun to leave the underworld

behind and return to its home in the sky, to be reborn, to mark the next essential

stage on its annual journey as the day is lengthened and its raised group writer.

...