The Way Past Winter

It was a winter they would tell tales about. A winter that arrived so sudden and sharp it stuck birds to branches, and caught the rivers in such a frost their spray froze and scattered down like clouded crystals on the stilled water. A winter that came, and never left.
Three years passed, then five. People spoke of curses and offered up prayers and promises. They blamed mages, their neighbours, the jarls who ruled their villages and towns. But blame didn’t break the winter, and soon no one could remember warmth except from fire, or green apart from the silvery hue of the fir trees.
Carts were abandoned in favour of sleighs, fine horses lost their worth until they were all traded for mountain ponies or mewling husky pups, or other animals that knew snow. Bears sank into perpetual hibernation, wolves slunk into the shadows of the vast forest. Some folk moved from their frozen land, but most stayed