A world is held in an endless winter. Two women seek an artifact to ensure that their child is born to a land of sunshine.

Today’s story is “Endless Winter” by J.S. Hawthorne, whose work can be found in The Book of Legends, an Ironclaw anthology by Sanguine Games, and in the forthcoming Found Footage, a horror anthology by Thurston Howl Publications. Check out her Twitter, @jshawthorn3, for updates on where her stories can be found.

Read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.

You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

and Today’s story is

“Endless Winter” by J.S. Hawthorne,

whose work can be found in The Book of Legends,

an Ironclaw anthology by Sanguine Games,

and in the forthcoming

Found Footage, a horror anthology by Thurston Howl Publications.

Check out her Twitter, @jshawthorn3,

for updates on where her stories can be found.

“Endless Winter”

by J.S. Hawthorne “Ceri, wait up!”

The hare’s voice echoed through the snowy wasteland.

Cerialyn, the raccoon, stood atop a long ridge,

ankle deep in snow.

She leaned against the gnarled hazelwood staff,

squinting into the chill wind blowing off of the mountains.

Her ear twitched as the call echoed,

but she did not turn.

Snow floated down,

barely enough to be considered a flurry,

settling on the cloak,

made from the scaley white hide of some far-northern beast, she wore.

More dusted her long brown hair,

pulled back at the base of her neck

with a simple leather cord.

Trudging through the deep snow,

the hare, Teyli,

tugged on the reins of their pack beast,

a black and yellow lizard as tall at the shoulder at Teyli was,

and noticeably taller than Ceri.

The hare wore the same style of long cloak,

hood pulled up against the chill,

shadows hiding everything but her ruby-red eyes.

Where Ceri was dark-furred and,

even in the cloak,

stood out against the omnipresent snow,

Teyli was nearly invisible,

white fur blending in with white gloves and tunic

and even the silver and steel flash of the sword she wore at her hip.

“Ceri!” Teyli called again,

stopping at the bottom of the ridge and looking up.

Ceri’s long tail lashed at the snow several times before she turned.

“Would you wait up?”

Their eyes met and Teyli was once again struck by Ceri’s beauty.

The raccoon was fastidious about her grooming, and her

fur and hair were brushed until they nearly shined.

She was lithe but a little heavier than Teyli—in the hare’s

opinion the perfect body.

But more than anything,

Teyli had fallen in love

with Ceri’s eyes.

When they had first met, years before the Endless Winter had begun to blanket the land in snow and ice,

Ceri had had deep brown eyes,

liquid and full of emotion.

They were the sort of eyes that one could fall into.

Her left eye remained the same

but since she had graduated from the Academy,

a brilliant ring of orange light had surrounded her right iris,

like the corona of a solar eclipse.

If Teyli had fallen in love before,

it was a schoolyard crush.

After, it was the inevitable rush of tides washing her away in Ceri’s depthless,

burning gaze. Ceri waited at the top of the ridge,

leaning on her staff,

as Teyli led the beast up.

By the time the hare was halfway up,

she was panting as though she’d run a mile. Ceri, to Teyli’s satisfaction, had the grace to look mildly ashamed of herself.

“Sorry,” Ceri said,

reaching out a hand to help Teyli the last few steps.

“How’s the baby?” Unconsciously,

Teyli pressed a hand against the bulge of her stomach,

feeling the small, fragile life growing there.

“He’s fine,” Teyli said, smiling faintly.

“We’re both fine. You just need to slow down a little, okay?” Ceri sighed. “We should have stayed in Second’s Refuge until he was born.” Teyli intertwined her fingers with Ceri’s

and gave her hand a soft squeeze.

“I don’t want to wait, Ceri.

I don’t want him born to this,”

she waved her free hand over the snowy forest.

It had been two years since the snows had started to fall,

two years of hard,

unyielding winter.

Only magic kept crops growing, and food was getting scarce across the realm.

Two monarchs and a republic had risen and fell in that time,

and if nothing stopped the snows,

more would follow.

“He deserves a land of sunlight.”

Ceri smiled, her expression softening, as it always did, when she listened to Teyli talk about the future.

But still, she could not let the argument go.

“Someone else could solve it.

It doesn’t have to be us.”

“By which you mean it doesn’t have to be me?”

Teyli said shrewdly.

She took a step closer to Ceri,

close enough to feel the warmth of her body.

“But why shouldn’t it be

us?” Ceri knew that she had lost the argument,

but she knew she had lost it before Teyli had opened her mouth.

She released Teyli’s hand and fell into a hug,

her head resting on the hare’s shoulder.

Their arms wrapped around each other

and soon all the world was circumscribed by their cloaks.

Outside might be endless snow and unceasing winter,

but that did not matter to them

and to the tiny life that Teyli was nurturing.

When they finally broke apart,

the sun had jumped five degrees closer to the horizon.

They both blushed,

though no one was around to see them beyond the pack beast, which paid them little attention.

Instead, it was snuffling through the snow,

foraging for any tender grass that had managed to grow beneath.

“How much farther is it?” Teyli asked. The top of the ridge at which they stood

overlooked yet more forest and a clear mountain lake.

“Not far,” said Ceri,

pointing with the tip of her staff across the lake.

“We can rest for the night soon,

then reach the old temple tomorrow afternoon, I think.

Can you manage another few hours’ walking?”

“I think so,” Teyli said,

holding her hand out.

“If you don’t run off again.”

With a wry chuckle,

Ceri took the offered hand and then

led the way down the far side of the ridge.

They walked in silence for some time,

not just their own

but the silence of a world blanketed by snow.

At the bottom of the ridge, where the trees grew crowded and close together,

sound returned to the world.

Birds chirped and squawked and complained about a year with no spring or summer,

small woodland animals scampered across boughs, and their footsteps cracked against the forest floor.

Soon their voices returned to them, as well,

and they talked, discussing their hopes and fears,

the coming child, and what the world would look like when the winter finally cleared away. “Will we even still recognize it?” Teyli asked, to Ceri’s teasing laughter.

They camped on the shores of the lake.

Despite the perpetual winter chill,

some underground thermal heated the water just enough to prevent ice from forming more than paper-thin floes.

Life still flourished in the lake, and Teyli fished a couple of fat mountain charr for Ceri

while the raccoon foraged through the trees for whatever edibles she could find.

In the end, they settled around a small campfire with a feast of berries and nuts,

willow bark and fish.

Teyli even ate some of the charr,

at Ceri’s insistence.

She found the taste and texture unpleasant,

but even she recognized that raspberries and bark could only go so far.

The snow stopped at about the same time the last rays of the sun vanished into the night.

While Teyli laid out their quilted bedroll

—much more pleasant to share on top of the added warmth—Ceri walked a wide circle around their campfire,

scattering the leftover seeds from their dinner as she muttered spells.

In her footsteps, the snow melted away,

replaced with the first few shoots of new growth.

By the time she finished her circle,

the first seeds she had planted had sprouted into knee-high plants still growing.

Ceri stepped back into the circle,

the warmth of the campfire enhanced

and rebounded by the circle of magic.

With a satisfied smile,

she watched as the plants grew into a stubby hedge of blackberry,

raspberry, hazel, and hawthorn,

all mixed together.

The hedge stopped just shy of her shoulder,

though it might gain another inch or two overnight.

The magic would fade over time,

and eventually the plants, coerced to grow and intertwine,

would start to compete for the thin resources of this wintry world,

but even then enough power would remain in the soil to keep the strongest of the plants alive for years,

if need be. When Ceri pulled off her cloak and boots

to slide into the bedroll with Teyli,

the clouds had cleared,

giving both women a broad and starry sky under which to sleep.

The crescent moon hung low,

just brushing the tops of the trees as it prepared to set itself.

“Your doing?” Teyli asked as Ceri nestled in against her shoulder. Teyli no longer felt comfortable sleeping any way but on her back,

owing to the baby,

but she did not mind the way she had become Ceri’s pillow.

“No, just serendipity,” Ceri responded,

relaxing into Teyli’s arms.

One of Ceri’s hands drifted over Teyli’s bare stomach,

resting comfortably on the bulge of the child inside her.

“Can we do it, do you think?

Bring the warmth back?”

“If it’s what you want, my heart,”

Ceri murmured, her eyes already closed.

She felt cold against Teyli,

who reflexively hugged the raccoon a little closer.

It was, she knew, a side-effect of the magic she had spent creating the hedge that shielded them from prying eyes

and would provide food and shelter for any other travelers passing their way.

She had, over the past year,

created dozens, perhaps hundreds, of hedges just like this one,

stretching from town to town. Teyli worried at the toll it was taking on Ceri

—certainly the glow of the raccoon’s eye had more fire than it used to,

but who knew if that was related.

She wouldn’t say anything,

not unless the side-effects were more severe than a chill that caused her raccoon to press close in the night.

Ceri would stop,

certainly, out of respect for Teyli’s concerns,

but the good the hedges did and the pride that Ceri felt in creating them outweighed those concerns.

That, at least, is what Teyli told herself as she held Ceri close

and the two drifted off to a peaceful sleep. Teyli

woke to snow falling on her face.

It melted swiftly in the enchanted ring that Ceri had created,

but the hedge, now as tall as the raccoon,

was already covered in a clear inch of powder.

Ceri had barely moved all night

but had warmed up significantly.

Teyli told herself, as she did every morning,

that Ceri was as warm as she had been the previous morning,

and every morning before that.

She told herself that Ceri didn’t feel

just a hair colder,

like she was no longer warming all the way up.

They never talked in the mornings.

While Teyli packed up their belongings,

Ceri checked the spells she had cast the night before

and also picked food from the new-grown plants to eat on their walk.

It was not an uncomfortable silence,

but one born out of a deep understanding of each other

and a love that transcended words.

They set off as soon as the wan sun poked over the trees,

barely visible as a faint glow behind the endless storm clouds.

With her sword, Teyli cut a hole in the hedge big enough for them to step through

and back into the cold

of the Endless Winter.

Ceri pointed their way north along the edge of the lake,

heading into the rough foothills surrounding the highland mountains.

Snow flurried on and off all morning,

and a chill breeze blew down on them from the mountaintop.

They were both shivering by the time they stopped for lunch

and Teyli did not immediately realize something was wrong.

They ate in a quiet punctuated only by gusts of wind

or the soft crack of ice from the lake,

huddled together next to the small fire that Teyli had built.

The silence weighed on Teyli

—this was not the companionable stillness of their earlier walk,

but a pregnant emptiness full of a meaning she didn’t quite grasp.

Still, it wasn’t until they had stood and were moving again that Teyli understood that Ceri was flagging.

The raccoon leaned heavily on her staff,

cloak pulled tight and hood down.

She struggled to wade through the deep snow drifts,

dragging her feet.

“Ceri?” Teyli asked.

Ceri turned to respond,

missed her step, and sprawled face-first into a snow bank.

Dropping the reins of the pack beast, Teyli bounded over,

kneeling in the ice and slush and helping Ceri into a sitting position.

The raccoon was shivering violently.

“Something’s wrong,”

Ceri murmured, “Broken.”

“What?” Teyli asked, fighting off panic.

Ceri shook her head.

“Because of the magic yesterday?”

“Must be,” Ceri managed,

though her teeth were chattering so badly that Teyli could barely understand it.

“What do I do?” Teyli asked.

She had no magical skill herself

and her knowledge of magecraft was limited to what Ceri and a handful of other friends had taught her.

“Warm,” was all that Ceri could force out.

The raccoon curled up into a ball in her cloak, still shivering.

Teyli brought the pack beast around

and carefully hefted Ceri onto its broad,

warm back. She then went to work clearing a small camp of snow

and building a roaring hot fire,

sacrificing some of their stockpiled wood to avoid wasting time to forage.

Once the fire was going on its own,

she brought the pack beast over.

It laid down obligingly,

bringing Ceri within the warming radius of the flames.

It was an hour, during with Teyli made Ceri tea and broth

and huddled with her in the shelter of the pack beast,

before Ceri was sufficiently recovered to talk again.

“It’s like there’s a block,” she murmured into Teyli’s shoulder.

She no longer shivered,

but she still felt unnaturally cool to the touch.

“I couldn’t draw any magic from the earth or the sun,

so I’ve been drawing from me.”

“And now you have nothing left?”

Ceri nodded. “I shouldn’t have let you create all those campsites.

You should have told me.”

“I didn’t realize,”

Ceri protested. “I swear to you,

on my life and magic, Teyli, I didn’t know.

I would have done something to fix it before if I had realized.” Privately, Teyli thought that Ceri’s life and magic were both in distressingly short supply.

“Okay, so how do we fix it now?”

Ceri was quiet for so long

that Teyli began to worry that the raccoon had fallen unconscious.

Teyli was just on the verge of shaking her

when Ceri spoke,

“The Law of Summer.”

Teyli’s breath caught in her throat.

They had been hunting for the Law of Summer for three months.

A sacred and powerful talisman,

Ceri had explained that it could be used to push back the Endless Winter,

to blow away the snows and restore the cycle of the year.

“You mean?” Ceri nodded,

her eyes closed. “I think so.”

She had told Teyli that they were looking for an old temple,

an ancient place of power,

that might have a piece of the puzzle before them.

She had not, however, said that

it might be the whole key.

“I’m sorry.” “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I might have been wrong.”

She opened her eyes, and Teyli was alarmed to see the corona of fire was

dim and flickering in Ceri’s right eye.

“I might still be wrong.”

“Is there another option?”

Ceri hesitated, then shook her head.

“Not now. Teyli?” “My love?”

“I’m sorry.” She started to say more, but Teyli stopped her with a kiss and let it linger,

holding Ceri close to her.

She tried to let some of her warmth fill the raccoon,

to keep her safe and alive.

She did let Ceri know, wordlessly,

that no apology was necessary.

“I will be back as soon as I can,”

Teyli told the raccoon when they finally parted.

“Try to drink more of the tea,

try not to move if you can help it.”

She squeezed Ceri’s hand,

and Ceri responded with a soft smile. Teyli did not linger,

not willing to chance spending any more of Ceri’s time on her reluctance to leave.

She moved as swiftly as caution would allow.

She could afford no accidents.

A misstep, perhaps a headlong tumble into the dark waters of the half-frozen lake,

would mean more than her life.

It seemed beyond hope that Ceri might mount a rescue in the state she was in.

“Just you and me, little one,”

she murmured as she passed out of sight of the camp,

one hand resting on her stomach.

Her other rested on the pommel of her sword.

The temple ruins sat at the base of two mountains,

less than an hour’s hike from where Teyli had left Ceri.

It was in two parts:

a ramshackle courtyard that had poorly weathered centuries of elements and a forbidding ziggurat

that appeared as immobile and immutable as the mountains around it. Teyli had no problem climbing over the ruins of the courtyard.

The passage of ancient years had worn the fallen statues and masonry smooth

and the mountain cover kept the snows at bay.

The temple’s interior

was pitch black. Teyli fished a small glass jar filled with moon-water

and whispered the name of her one true love to it.

Instantly, it blazed to life with an orange light the same color as Ceri’s corona.

Holding the bottle aloft in her offhand,

Teyli drew her sword

and inched into the ageless pyramid.

The air inside was stale

and smelled of dead moss

and cold stone. The floor was slick with lichen and ghost grass

that had managed to cling to what little life and light was available inside the temple.

Huge ceremonial rooms

sat just off the main hallway,

but Teyli ignored those.

Her prize would be in the central chamber of the ziggurat

and she refused to be distracted.

She had just reached a set of interior doors twice as tall as she was

when she heard the voice.

It sounded like her father, someone she hadn’t thought of in years,

and the force of it caused the light of the moon-water to flicker like a candle.

“Little hare, what dost thou seek here?”

“Who are you?” Teyli demanded,

spinning in place to attempt to locate the source of the voice.

It seemed to resonate through the stones themselves.

“I am the voice of ancients.

What dost thou seek in these, our hallowed halls?”

Teyli swallowed.

“I seek the Law of Summer.”

“Such a prize is not for the asking, O mortal.

Art thou prepared for the trials that thou needs face?”

“I am.” “Wherefore dost thou seek the Law?”

“To save our world.”

“No. I will ask thee only twice more.”

The voice rumbled into silence like a passing thunderstorm.

Heart pounding, Teyli stood in silence,

staring into the darkness beyond the light of her moon-water.

She screamed when the doors behind her opened with an earthquake rumble,

jumping and spinning,

sword up and shaking in her hand.

Beyond the door was a huge amphitheater

filled with raised seats

surrounding a circular sand pit.

As she watched,

torches blazed to life with eerie blue and purple flames,

flooding the amphitheater with flickering shadows. Teyli kissed the bottle of moon-water to extinguish the light

and slid it back into her pocket before she strode forward,

head high and sword out.

The flickering torch-shadows seemed to fill the seats

like an audience,

a thousand amorphous shades all watching her descend to the pit.

She ignored them,

and the creeping feeling of being watched.

“Now what?” she called

once she had reached the sandy stage below.

In answer to her challenge,

the entire temple rumbled,

the ground bucking beneath her feet.

The sand rose into a pillar ten feet tall.

A mouth formed first,

opening into a gaping maw that roared while the sand fell away,

revealing a figure like a horse,

made of the amphitheater itself.

It held an axe as big as Teyli with a blade formed of fire.

The horse’s eyes were glowing black obsidian.

The sand-horse swept the axe up

and then brought it down over its head,

missing Teyli’s stomach by inches.

“My baby!” Teyli shouted,

bringing her own sword—so small and pitiful in comparison to the guardian

—up in a defensive posture.

The guardian paused,

glowering down at her,

snuffling at the air.

“The child is an innocent,”

it said in the voice of her father.

“Thou hast our word that no harm shall befall it

through our actions or inactions.” “What good is your

word?” demanded Teyli,

still holding her sword up.

“You attacked me without provocation.” “Thou hast

sought the treasure hidden within this sacred temple

with intention unknown

and proffer excuse and obfuscation.

By our laws, thou hast provoked the triple guardians and must bypass each.

Turn thou and retreat;

we will not stop thee.”

Teyli thought of Ceri.

“I can’t.” The horse hefted the axe once again. “Then

thou needs best me to proceed further.”

Without any additional warning,

it swung down, nearly splitting Teyli in half.

She slid out of the way at the last moment,

feeling the heat of the fiery blade as it whistled past her whiskers.

She whipped her sword around and into the horse’s knee as she ducked past it,

a strike that would have hamstrung a mortal opponent.

The horse stumbled and growled loud enough to shake the amphitheater

but did not fall.

The axe fell and struck the ground where Teyli’s foot had been less than a moment before,

sending up a spray of sand as she dashed forward,

driving her blade deep into the horse’s stomach.

Again, it snarled at her,

but it did not bleed

and would not die.

The third strike caught her in the arm,

cutting through her cloak and the padded leather of her armor,

drawing a thick line of blood.

She spun with the strike,

bringing the side of her blade up into the horse’s stomach.

It passed through with a shower of sand as Teyli rolled forward with the momentum of her attack.

The horse bellowed and turned,

its massive hooves slamming down on the pit

in small explosions of sand. Teyli held her ground as the creature advanced,

sword held steady in front of her.

It raised its axe over its head,

mouth open in a noisome roar,

prepared to split her in half.

She let the point of her blade drop as she stepped smoothly inside the horse’s reach,

then struck upward as the axe crashed down behind her.

Her sword bit deep into the horse’s side,

just under what would have been a ribcage

on a creature of flesh and blood.

She met no resistance,

her weapon sliding smoothly through the creature

and exiting its body where shoulder met neck.

The horse howled and then exploded into a whirlwind around her.

She covered her face with her arm,

eyes closed tight against the stinging barrage.

When she opened them,

the amphitheater was empty and quiet,

the strange torches burned low.

“Now what?” she repeated.

In response, a circular section of the floor melted down,

revealing a staircase leading into the darkness below.

Blue and purple flames popped into existence along the stairs,

illuminating the way downward.

“Wherefore dost thou seek the Law?”

the voice of the temple echoed from the depths.

“To save everything!”

Teyli shouted. “No,”

the temple responded.

“We will ask thee

but once more.” In the ringing silence that followed,

Teyli glared down into the staircase.

When the temple did not react she began to follow the stairs downward.

They spiraled deep into the earth with no break,

until Teyli was panting for breath,

her hand pressed against the cold stone wall to steady herself.

She did not know how long she walked,

but when she reached the end of the stairs, the air was

frigid and smelled of earth and

the old things that slumber

beneath it.

The room at the bottom of the stairs was not large

and lit fully by a torch in each corner.

At the far end from the stairs was a set of massive stone doors.

Teyli, her sword still in her hand,

crept closer to the doors.

Ancient writing blazed to life against the doors,

burning with that same blue-purple fire.

“I don’t speak that language,” she called out to the temple.

The temple boomed out at her,

its voice louder than it had been,

“Hear this and speak the password

or return whence thou came:

Drawn in light, cold mother.

Grows, fades and lives again.”

“What a terrible poem,” Teyli said, affronted.

“It doesn’t even rhyme.”

“Test not our patience, O mortal!”

the temple boomed.

“It is not our doing that thou didst not study the ancient languages!

In its original form, these lyrics wouldst have thee fall to thy knees and weep!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Teyli said.

“Could you please repeat the riddle?”

“Drawn in light, cold mother.

Grows, fades and lives again.” Teyli studied the door as she sheathed her sword,

though she kept one hand on the pommel.

The part about light

reminded her of the eerie torches that had lit the interior of the temple,

and she spent several fruitless minutes trying to connect the rest of the poem to those torches.

“May I ask you questions about the riddle?”

Teyli asked. The temple remained stubbornly silent.

“Fine,” she muttered,

releasing her sword to feel the swell of the child growing inside of her.

She was a mother,

but she didn’t think she was cold.

Her thoughts drifted to Ceri,

who undoubtedly was at risk of freezing,

and then it all clicked together.

“The moon!” she shouted.

“The answer is the moon!”

She groped at her pouch

and the small bottle of moon-water inside.

That was unnecessary:

as soon as she said “moon”

the doors began to swing silently open.

Beyond was a circular chamber carved from the living earth itself.

Two pedestals stood in the center,

a respectful distance from each other,

atop which floated two identical crystal prisms.

Both glowed sun-warm yellow,

and heat flowed forth

and into the room where Teyli still stood.

It was a summer heat,

humid and bursting with life,

smelling of honeysuckle and rose,

tasting of sea-salt air

and sun-warmed tomato and eggplant.

Teyli stepped into the chamber,

hand once again resting on her sword.

Sand erupted from the ground but,

instead of a new monster,

it resolved into two curving staircases,

each one reaching up to the top of one of the pedestals.

“Which one?” she demanded,

glancing back and forth between the two crystals.

“Wherefore dost thou seek the Law?”

the temple asked,

its voice soft, like a caress.

She felt its breath like sweet summer wind on her fur.

“To save…” Teyli started,

but her voice caught in her throat.

“To save Ceri.” The staircase on the left began to crumble back into sand.

The temple whispered to her again,

“Thou wilt not be able to save thy world if thou choose this path.”

“Can I save my world and my wife simultaneously?

Can the other crystal save both?”

“No.” “Then my choice is easy.”

The temple made no response as Teyli climbed the staircase on the right.

The crystal—The Law of Summer

—was barely four inches long

and its sunlight seemed wan and fleeting as she closed her hand around it.

The light went out in the other crystal simultaneously. Teyli watched as it sunk into the pedestal,

vanishing from sight.

She knew, without a doubt,

that they would not find any further aid in this place.

The Law of Summer was warm in her hand and provided all of the light she needed

to walk back the path she had come.

The torches were all extinguished,

the shadows gone.

The staircase vanished without a sound as soon as her paws touched the sand in the amphitheater.

She hesitated for a moment,

wondering if the horse would reappear,

but she was left alone.

The temple spoke to her

one last time as she traversed the hallway to the outside. “Teyli of the Seaside Moors,

thy child will be born in a land of snows

but shall not grow up there.

By his first birthday,

thou shalt have had three opportunities to end this winter

and restore this world to balance.”

“Will we succeed?” “That is up to thee, O mortal.

But yes, we believe thou shalt.

We foresee thy child happy

and safe in a world of plenty.”

“Thank you.” But there was no response.

The sun had dipped almost to the horizon

when Teyli reached the surface.

She tried to be careful,

but her anxiety over being gone from Ceri’s side for so long

had her dashing across the snow-filled landscape

within three strides of the temple’s entrance.

She reached their camp shortly after sunset.

Ceri was nearly frozen to the touch,

too cold even to shiver.

Without understanding what she was doing, or why,

Teyli pressed the Law of Summer against Ceri’s chest.

The raccoon gasped, her eyes

shooting open.

Her right eye blazed with light

then slowly subsided until just the corona shone,

brighter than before but not by much.

“You did it?” Ceri asked,

staring up at Teyli in awe.

Her hand touched her chest.

“I can feel it, Teyli,

like a sun inside of me.”

Teyli smiled and pulled Ceri close.

“Not quite, I’m afraid,” she said

when their kiss had ended.

She explained what she had seen

and what the temple had told her.

Ceri was silent for a long time,

her body, once again warm in Teyli’s grasp,

pressed close to the hare.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally.

“This is my fault.”

“No. You did a good thing, my love.

We made the winter a little less cold.”

She laid Ceri’s hand on her belly.

“Together, we’ll still fix this,

and he’ll grow up in summer.

This wasn’t the end, Ceri.

It’s still the beginning.”

This was “Endless Winter”

by J.S. Hawthorne, read for you by Khaki,

your faithful fireside companion.

You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you have a short story you think would be a good fit,

please get in touch with me.

I’m @khakidoggy on Twitter and telegram,

and I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for listening

to The Voice of Dog.