Come, young ones, and gather around the cool light of the fungus.  Closer, now, my voice isn't that loud.  Yes, even you at the back.  You're all young compared to me.

There, that's better.  Take a moment to settle into the soft cold of the snow, and let me tell you a story.  Which one, you ask?  Hmm. . .I know.  To celebrate this, the longest, coldest night of the year, I will tell you the legend of Vivienne and Ophelia.

Listen to my voice.  Let it carry you back to a time before the first foreigner came to our lands, when Ikoe was wild and free.  Travel through the primal beauty of our Northern forests, at the time of year when the trees groan under the weight of the snow and beings of warmth huddle in their burrows.  Scamper through the branches of the Evergreen, and follow the brisk breeze into the hollow in its trunk.  Within it, two sisters are busy making preparations for the celebration to come.

Having emerged from the ice tunnels that run beneath our forests just moments before, the sisters are examining their Winter House.  The small beds carved out of the trunk are just as the sisters remember them from the last winter, albeit covered in a thin layer of freezing dust.  There are baskets stacked in the corner with a rainbow of dried fruits within them.  The sisters each place the fresh Winter Red berries they brought from the tunnels into the top basket before they begin their separate tasks.  One makes her way over to her bed to mend their celebration dresses, while the other goes to the entrance to their home and peers outside.

Take a moment, now, to peer closely at these sister Solasteice.  The one carefully repairing the frayed edges of their leaf and flower gowns is golden, like the sky as the winter sun dips behind the horizon.  Her pale hair flows around her gently pointed ears and pools at her waist.  Her eyes, which stare in concentration at the garments beneath her delicate fingers, are a blue as pale as the ice on a frozen lake.  This is