Stories

There weren’t many times when the Hearth was bare, but the Celebration of Harvest was one of them. People were scattered around the city, busy with the preparations, only returning to the Great Hall to bring things for the feast. The Twins, who had far outgrown the need to be watched like children, were ...

Aifa, her grandmother and the rest of the Caretakers had been working hard all morning, braiding bunches of colorful ribbons into rainbows. The entire Grand Hall of the Hearth was filled with ribbons, whose silky threads seemed to be animated by their own inner spirit and slithered into crevices and rece...

“Hurry up, granddaughter, we wouldn’t want our guests to find us unprepared,” Aifa’s grandmother commented, more to assuage her own tension than anything else. Everything had been prepared, cleaned, shined to a blinding polish, planned to the last detail. “Today is a big day, you know, the time when the door between life and deat...

“Knead joyfully, granddaughter, you don’t want that bread to be heavier than a rock,” grandmother teased.

All the Caretakers were gathered at their house to bake together for the Day of Abundance. They ...

The middle of July brought with it an abundance of early harvest, but the Caretakers were so busy, they didn’t even notice the buoyant unfolding of life around them. They spent day after day, gathered around the Twins, listening to the wisdom the two poured forth, wisdom whose source nobody really unders...

For the second time that year, the community took their trip down the side of the mountain, down to the sea. It was the middle of June, and it seemed like the whole world was covered in flowers, especially the tall, bright yellow flowers of the meadow, which some still believed were faeries in disguise. There was talk that at night, on the eve of this feast, they could be seen dancing across the fields and meadows, as if stepping o...

“Are you nervous, granddaughter?” grandmother asked.

It was Aifa’s first public speaking assignment, one for which she had prepared the entire week, and she was, of course, all nerves.

The Great Hall was filled with light and flowers, there were so many flowers, so many candles, the whole floor was covered in them. It felt strange for Aifa to watch the Twins, who were dressed up in their simple white garments and had flowers woven in their elaborately braided hair, sit donning unearthl...

“Aifa,” grandmother whispered, although nobody in the house was sleeping. “Are you ready, granddaughter? It is time to go to the Hearth.”

Aifa wrapped her garment a little tighter around her waist and w...

Anyway, that afternoon Aifa and the Twins were out on the daffodil meadow, which Ama and Jal seemed to be particularly fond of, when all of the sudden the sky grew dark and shook with rumblings. Any other children would have run for the hills, screaming their lungs out, but not the Twins, who looked mesmeri...

From the moment the Twins arrived, poor Aifa hadn’t experienced a moment’s rest. They were five years old now, constantly moving around and getting into everything, and last, but not least, they never stopped talking. They seemed to have reached that glorious age when everything aroused their curiosity a...

The closer it got to the spring equinox, the more animated the Grand Hall of the Hearth became, engulfed in a flurry of activities related to sprucing up, clearing and decorating it for the arrival of the Twins. Every now and then one of the Caretakers went out into the yard, to check if the ice on the p...

The Day of the Blessings usually started early in Aifa’s household. Aifa and her siblings were already dressed up in their costumes by the time the sun was high up in the sky, and were crowding each other in the kitchen, where they were all gathered to stuff their goody baskets with filled pastries and othe...

Towards the end of February winter started easing its grasp on the mountain springs, allowing them to come back to life, almost suddenly, in bubbling expressions of movement and sound. The tiny brooks searched for each other down the mountain, forming tiny pools and waterfalls, and when they could, they joined their forces in larger streams, with the playfulness of living things, and very young ones at that. From the window of her ...

Ifyou were born in Cré at the beginning of February, you would be among the youngest people to enter the Hearth. It was the yearly tradition that new mothers should bring the babies who have been born over the course of the previous year to receive a blessing. Aifa was born in the summer, so she was a few months old when she first breathed the air of the Hearth, which was believed to be able to imbue people with health and vigor, a...

“Wake up, granddaughter,” Aifa’s grandmother shook her gently, so she wouldn’t be startled out of her deep sleep. “We need to go to the Hearth soon, we don’t want to keep people waiting.”

Aifa got up qu...

Aifa had always asked herself, ever since she was a little child, why would a community decide to perform a ceremony that featured water during the time of year when it was almost guaranteed to be frozen. Of course if she asked her mother, she would have gotten hours of cross-referenced instruction about...