Sun Mote Copse Octarine light

The strong wind and heavy rainfalls of the day ceased by nightfall, the sky cleared and Wraen left the comfortable, warm and dry den of hers to stretch her legs. The copse was almost quiet, save for the background sound of rustling leaves and raindrops falling off them. She inhaled the cold and earthy smell typical for autumn and smiled to herself. Despite the approaching winter and troubles that they would face, this was her favourite season. Spring brought tiredness, but in autumn Wraen was born anew.

She came to the edge of the forest and after inspecting some border marking and tracks left by late night visitors, she sat down to observe the area. And just happened so to lift her head and catch sight of fantastic greenish lights dancing against the dark blue background of the night-sky. Aurea borrealis was not so impressive here as it would have been further up north, but there still was plenty to see and enjoy. Wraen's gaze followed the patterns the lights drew and enjoyed the beauty.

Her father had told her to stay close to the rendezvous site, what with all the rumbling that was happening beneath the earth these days, and most of the time, Avery abided by his rules. She didn't go any further than she was allowed; she always checked in with her dad before nightfall. She was a model citizen.

But tonight was different. She had touched base with Elwood and had bedded down in her usual spot, but sleep had eluded her. For an hour or so, she tossed and turned, and then finally she got up. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the moonlit darkness, and then she began to walk.

She had no particular destination in mind, but at some point, she left the rendezvous site. She just kept going; on some level, she realized how far she had gone, but that thought wasn't enough to stop her. Only when the trees began to thin did she slow her pace. Suddenly, the canopy overhead dissipated, revealing a breathtaking view of the sky painted with splashes of green among the stars.

Avery gasped and sat down hard, blue eyes wide as they reflected the light overhead. She didn't even notice that Wraen was not far away, similarly enjoying the spectacle.

It was a mesmerizing spectacle - once you had begun to watch it, it was hard to look away, because of the hope of seeing more. And thus "just another minute" stretched into half an hour and more without you even noticing it. The only reminders of the time that had passed were the cold paws and the back that protested against remaining in one position for too long.

Luckily for Wraen she had a distraction - Avery had joined her and she let the girl enjoy the scene for a long time, before getting up and taking a seat near her. "Beautiful ain't they?" she asked her. "I have seen quite a few in my lifetime, but they never cease to amaze me."

The aurora borealis was a reminder that the world was still beautiful, even amongst all the chaos. Granted, Avery didn't know the full extent of the destruction that the tremors had caused all across the wilds; she only knew that she didn't like the feel of the ground shifting unsteadily beneath her feet. Nonetheless, she lost herself in the shower of stars, and visibly startled when Wraen approached after a few long moments.

She looked up, surprised, but her face quickly softened into a smile when she realized who her companion was. Wraen seated herself nearby, turning her face skyward as she spoke, and Avery did the same. The polar lights continued to dance as Avery asked, without looking away, "You've seen it before? It's so pretty. It's like...a rainbow at night."

"Not often - no," Wraen shook her head. There were only two or three prominent sightings during her lifetime and that also had happened, when she had been very young and been travelling with her parents in nothern regions. In one particular area they had spent few weeks in October and lights had been very frequent spectacles. 

"My mom told of many explanations people have come up with for this phenomenon," she went on, glad to have an opportunity to share some of Osprey's stories with the new generation. "There is one story, which tells that the lights are either the spirits of the dead themselves or their guiding lights to those souls, who are on their way to the next world," she offered, leaving out the less pleasant part about mournful ghosts of stillborn children of Greenlandic origin.

"Vikings believe that this is the bridge from Earth to Valhalla - their paradise," and - frankly speaking - Wraen would not mind crossing that kind of bridge no matter, where it led. "However, my personal favourite is the tale about firefoxes, running so fast across the snow that they make particles of it rise high in the sky, where they reflect sunlight," she finished and let the wealth of new information sink in for the young girl.

Avery kept her gaze focused on the sky as Wraen spoke, though the tilt of her ears indicated that she was listening raptly. The Sovereign's soft voice was the perfect addition to the visual experience, and her words gave Avery food for thought. Her mind lingered on the first explanation -- that the dancing lights were the spirits of those that had passed on. She wondered if Wildfire and Colt were watching over them even as they spoke, and was comforted by the thought.

Wraen continued, sharing that there were other beliefs as to the origins of the borealis. "Valhalla" was an unfamiliar word that Avery disregarded quickly, though she smiled at the image of foxes with fiery tales darting across the atmosphere. Finally turning away from the display to look at Wraen, Avery asked, "Can you tell me the story about the f-firefoxes?"

Ain't this video beautiful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ux3DMkbCrA ? This is, what they actually look like, when you are beyond the Arctic Circle. I saw them in the North and even without the epic soundtrack they are captivating to watch.

Truth to be told, Wraen did not know much about the firefoxes beyond the catchy name, but she would not be a true story-teller, if she would disappoint a curious kid by telling that she did not know. "Let me think for a moment," she told Avery, then turned her gaze to the dancing lights and thought. 

Imagination is much like the Northern lights. One's soul is that sun in the centre, and, when it sings, the particles rise and collide and send ripples across one's mind. There is a feeling as if a flash goes right through your body, your heartbeat quickens, for a moment the colours of the world seem brighter, clearer, you look beyond the veil and feel the miracle of being, thinking, living. 

Wraen watched the green, shimmering veil shift, swirl and change. And then it happened. In a little flash the firefox came from a mere two dimensional idea it sprang to life. It's eyes gleamed as two little bright stars, it's coat was silvery white, little sparks crackling the length of it. It yawned, it raised itself from the ground and sprang at the lights. Where it touched them, there the spectacle changed. 

"No one really knows, where they came from, but the story goes that they were created from stardust. Too little matter for a full-fledged star, but enough magic to make them feisty and alive. They spend their days chasing each other across the sky and time from time they come on Earth as well. They are curious and observant little things. Feisty and sly too," Wraen let the story flow freely, she had no set destination in mind for, where it should go.

So beautiful! *_*

She wasn't at all disappointed when Wraen asked for a moment to think. She simply nodded her head and then looked skyward once more, dazzled by the scenery. As the lights continued to dance and flicker, her mind wandered and she began to speculate about Wildfire and Colt, imagining that she could make out their figures in the stars overhead.

She wasn't left alone with her thoughts for long, though; even before Wraen began to speak, Avery spotted the spark of light that inspired Wraen's story. Had she not already had the word "firefox" planted in her brain, she might not have recognized it, but with a sharp intake of breath she straightened and watched the lithe, illuminated creature as it bounded across her periphery.

As Wraen began to unspool her story, Avery's lips twitched into a smile. The ethereal foxes were curious and observant, feisty and sly -- "Just like real foxes," she commented.

"Just like them, yes," Wraen agreed and nodded, watched the specatacle for a while in silence, until a sudden thought made her smile. "Come to think of it, maybe all creatures have some sort of divine representations either in the sky or in a paralell world," she told Avery, while trying to remember the story about two wolves, who chased the sun and the moon accross the sky. Their names were on the tip of her tongue, and she was almost sure that she recalled correctly, who chased which celestial object.

"Skoll is the name of the wolf, who..." she paused here, furrowed her brow, looking for the right rhythm to the verse. And - aha - here it came: "...follows the shining priest into the desolate forest." There had been a second one in the myths. "And the other is Hati, Hrr - somebody's son, who chases the bright... maiden(?) of the sky," she finished. "The northerners believed that there are two wolves. Skoll hunts the moon and Hati hunts the sun. If either of them manage to catch and devour it, they believed that the world would come to an end," she told.

Source - https://norse-mythology.org/skoll-hati/ . Wraen is by no means poet, but I loved that simple verse so much I had to include it. :)

Wraen agreed with her, then suggested that maybe there were reflections of all of the earth's creatures in the stars. Avery liked that idea, and tucked it into her proverbial pocket. She didn't know it, but Wraen was helping to shape her ideas and opinions of the natural world with something as simple as storytelling.

The caretaker continued, naming two wolves, Skoll and Hati, who hunted the moon and the sun, respectively. If they ever managed to catch their quarry, the world would end; this was a concept Avery couldn't quite grasp, but it didn't sound good. The tale caused more questions to spring up in her mind. "Why do they ch-chase the sun and the moon?" she asked.

"Well, the person, who told me this, was not too keen on these practical details," Wraen chuckled light-heartedly, having no plausible explanation of, why should anyone want to chase the celestial objects and eat them too. "In a very real sense, if you think about the sun and the moon, and how day changes into the night, you have a feeling of movement," she began. "And hunting is a very wolfish thing to do. So, if we can hunt animals down here, why shouldn't very huge and very powerful wolves hunt up there a prey that matches their skill and importance in the mythical world?"

"You see, Avery, a story is a wolf's way of finding order in a world of chaos. Otherwise it's fearsome to think that everything happens at random and there is no driving force behind everything," Wraen had entered very philosophical waters, perhaps too sophisticated for the young wolf to fully understand. "The same people, who came up with this, also had a belief that a large snake called Jörmungandr​ encircles the world and bites its own tail. If it ever releases its grip, the world will come to an end," she told. "For the record, I do not think it will, but the legend goes on telling, what a fearsome monster this is and that it will kill one of the head gods. So - basically, you can assume that the world snake, Skoll and Hati are there to humble the gods and the people as well."

A lot of what Wraen said made sense to Avery, and she absorbed the information like a sponge. Even when the caretaker began to make her own inferences based on the tales of the snakes and the wolves, she paid rapt attention, despite the fact that she didn't quite understand everything being said. She still got the gist of it, though, and it was enough to spark a curiosity in her mind and heart.

She shuddered slightly at the mention of the monster, then her mind backtracked to tack onto something Wraen had said only moments before. The stories that she was telling weren't necessarily true; they had been created by someone who was seeking an answer that wasn't apparent. So could they make up their own stories? "H-have you made up any tales to exp-plain something?" she asked.

"I have," Wraen nodded. "As a part of a game. My mom and me would walk together and one had to point to a thing and the other had to come up with a short story about it," she smiled, remembering this fondly. Just for a moment she saw herself clearly, a warm golden-autumn evening, her walking side by side with Osprey and them both chattering away. Those had been good times, btu isn't it so that childhood is usually comprised with memories of sunlight just as we tend to think that people in the beginning of 20th century lived in a grayscale world?

"For example, the reason, why snow is falling is that the big cloud wolf in the sky is shaking it's coat and his fur flies everywhere," she told the girl. "Next spring, when it gets warmer and your own coat changes, you will understand the similarity," Wraen added, because she often forgot that the kids here had not yet seen many things that came along with the changing seasons, which she - on the other hand - considered as regular and no longer extraordinary.

"Or that the Mother wind has many rowdy children and, when the autumn storms are raging outside, it's the time, when they go out to hunt, play and chase each other. You can hear their howls," she retold a story of her mother's. "Then there was a nice one about that upper-lip line right in the middle of your nose," Wraen said. "They say that before a baby is born, an angel puts a finger on it's lips, so that it does not tell about it's previous life," she said. 

Angel story is not mine either. Sounds less awkward and more understandable, when you imagine human face. :D

That's cute, I had never heard that before!

Avery wasn't surprised when Wraen was quickly able to fulfill her quest; rather, she was excited and pleased as the caregiver began unspooling another series of yarns. She mentioned that it was something of a game she and her mother had constructed, and Avery thought she might like to try that with Finley sometime -- or anyone, really. She imagined that she and Sugar could probably come up with some pretty cool stories if they tried.

Wraen talked about snow, the wind's children, and a familiar facial feature of all wolves. Avery absently reached up to touch her own upper lip with her paw, feeling the groove that Wraen spoke of. She gave a short exhalation of laughter as she looked up at Wraen. "I like that one," she replied.

Her gaze strayed skyward again, where the lights were still dancing. "It's n-neat that there are stories about d-different things -- not just the sky," she commented, since their conversation that evolved in quite a natural way from its point of origin.

"Definitely," Wraen fully agreed with the girl's observation. Most wolves could live all their lives without a single story in it, but for her it would be impossible. For a soul, who had seen the flash of inspiration, of that beautiful promised land beyond the veil of reality, can never be the same. The echo remains and the mind always yearns to return there. That one glimpse had given her something that was hard to describe, but very valuable. A golden thread that shone brightly in the fabric of her life.

Lost in thoughts, she sat next to Avery for the rest of the time, never once turning her gaze away from the lights. At times she could make out shapes of animals and other beings in the bright green, everchanging canvas. At others - it was just a swirling stream of randomness, but beautiful all the same. Later on she would remember this evening fondly not just because of the spectacle itself, but because she had shared it with someone, who had felt the same.  

Memories are all about emotions, aren't they?

Last one from me. Thank you very much!

Gradually, their conversation faded into silence, which was fitting as they continued to observe the night sky's display. Avery remained interested in the dancing lights until a yawn worked its way between her jaws, followed by another, and still another. Her eyelids began to grow heavy and she swayed briefly, catching herself before she fell over.

With a simultaneously sheepish and grateful smile in Wraen's direction, she got up and padded sleepily towards home, where she curled up and fell fast asleep -- with the aurora borealis playing across her mind's eye.