Solstice

The oak bonfire burned happily, the flames spreading from log to log. The Yule Log lay in the centre, its bark unyielding to the blaze. Sparks burst into the air. The forest was alive with the melodies of animals calling. The world was uniting to welcome back the sun. We sang songs of fire and warmth and the intersections of past, present,and future. We sang of the sun. The melodies warped around us, weaving into the circles of the world. The world made of song. We sang songs of things that were, and could yet be. The tales were forged with our music. Songs woven of sorrow and hope and life and fire. The melodies rose into the air and swirled in the gloaming. Each note became a flame, a flame the burned brightly in the night sky. We sang the music of the star kindlers, just as the Tuatha de Danann had done so many centuries ago.

This was Yule, though, and there was not time to dwell on the horrors that swarmed my brain. The raven would have to calm his beating wings long enough for me to enjoy the bringing back of light into the world. Ronan handed me a lit candle, its flame dancing and quivering in the gloaming. The others, too, bore lit candles. It was the Hour of the Kindling of Candles, the hour to recognise the Oak King’s victory and the coming of summer. We lit lights to help encourage the sun in its return. With the candles casting amber light on our faces in the dimness of evening, we were the Bearers of Light. The Bearers of Hope.

The magick is fading from our world, though, just as the Tuatha de Danann had dissipated into the mist. The chances of eucatastrophe are low now, without magick seeping in through cracks in the world. The otherworld was hidden, sheathed in mist. The lays of brave heroes are also fading into the mist, to be forgotten among the clamour of the stories of those who are not marginalised. I feared that my story, too, was destined to fade into the mist and be forgotten. I would be a shadow. A deadname on a crumpling gravestone in the cemetery of people who were so unkind to me when I was living.

This was a time when miracles happened. In the days of the Tuatha de Danann, there were many narrow crevices where magick was able to trickle into our world. Back then, there was magick in everything. It seeped into our world like water through bones. The cracks in the world were open, allowing for eucatastrophe to happen. Small things in every day life, that could change the world for the better. That is what magick does. Magick is not inherently evil, it only becomes so when it is used by beings and wielded for evil purposes. Magick itself, though, is neither good nor evil. It simply is.