The last hearth at the end of the world.
The wood of the roof creaked as the snows piled down on it. The stone walls of Sanguinia's homes arguably did nothing against the cold. Just beyond were the mountains of ice; true ice, not just glaciers and frozen lakes and sheets of snow. For all the strength of common life, these peaks might as well be made of the abstraction of despair: jagged crags and treacherous steeps and hollows all painted of that single deceptive whitewash. Wherever there was a cold air, even at the furthest ends of the Lands, this must be where it originated. The only break in the white, the white that was the sky and the land, were those struck dead by winter--- whether it was a long-dead, long-frozen claw reaching up motionless from the layers of frost as a marker, or a long-dead, long-frozen revenant, come to claim your soul and your children and all manner of terrible things. What a terror it had been to get here, and how terrible it was to almost always have those mountains in eyesight. It was a relief the room had no windows. The twenty hearts in that room huddled about the firepit, grumbling to and fro, rumbling out their grievances to each other. A lirnyk spun his song, the lyre-wheel hissing a warning.
To the falling darkness,
Against the sharp night, "no!"
Here he steps, his cloak messed,
His chin held high, behold, lo!-
The man of Kosova.
A song upon the wind-
Wishing to call him home,
But that man had sinned-
His voice the thunder, "be gone!"
The man of Kosova.
There he steps, song singing,
A sad danse in his stride.
His funeral bells still ringing,
And the dirge for his bride,
The dead of Kosova.
I saw him, I am blessed,
To leave me alone, to go,
So he still steps, messed,
His chin held high, behold, lo!-
The ghost from Kosova.
The young woman shivered. Was there ever a world beyond this land of ice?
At the very least there was still song.