Diaries of the Royal Bard, 3rd recorded entry

Sun’s dawn we call it, but dawn does not want to come,

Winter, we call it, and the snow is our prison

Cold, we call it, and it has claimed many lives in short time

Fire, we call it, and without it, we would all be dead

I knew that it was coming, I told Al-Esh that it was coming, but she didn’t listen, and so pays again for not heeding my advice. Now it is my duty to help her, but it seems she already has someone to warm her bea]d, and my songs or stories will not serve her as well as a simple fire. I feel powerless.

And yet I wonder if she deserves any help, or that bed-warmer. Because of her insistence to leave the Golden Hill, where we have a warm keep and safe walls, hundreds have died of cold. I see mothers crying over the blackened corpses of their children, tears freezing on their cheeks. I see black toes and fingers strewn across the ‘camp’, and people who cannot walk because they cannot attach them back.

I am lucky. I was one of the first in the rebellion, and one of the first to befriend our queen, so I have a nice warm tent, with a fire to keep my toes nice and pink. My lute has gone to oblivion, it seems even instruments die in the cold long nights. I would like to write a poem again, but my fingers are too cold, and the paper too stale.

Light is all we have, and .....nevermind