So, the Solstice approaches!
Seems like I just "Told the Wheel" for Samhain, should post it again, maybe on the Solstice itself...
For now though, here's a story I wrote a dozen years ago about Darkness, Light and the Promise of the Eclipse. I think that the feelings work well for the return of the Sun on the Solstice as well, see what you think.
*** Lyghte & Dharknesse ***
The morning sun shone brightly through the kitchen window.
Martha crossed the room and looked out on her rose garden, reveling in the interplay of color and chuckling at the antics of a small grey squirrel until it jumped up on the gargoyle’s shoulder and chittered in its ear.
"Stanley!" she called, "Where did you get that, that thing?! and why did you put it in my garden?!"
"What are you hollering about?" Stanley asked as he came into the kitchen still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "You know I don’t do anything with it unless you ask me... what’s wrong out there?"
"Over there on the bench under the archway, there’s an ugly little..." her voice tapered off as she stood with mouth open, pointing at the empty bench, and then whispered, "It’s gone!"
"Maybe some of the neighborhood kids are playing games?" Stanley began doubtfully, and was stopped from further commentary by a light knock on the back door.
"Now what" he muttered, going to the door and then calling out "Who’s there?"
Only silence answered, and he yanked the door open, his intended "What do you want?" being truncated to "Wha...??" by the sight of the gargoyle sitting on the porch.
Pointing to the statue, he glanced back to his wife, asking "Is this what you’re taking about?" and then, looking back as she stepped over saw the porch unoccupied.
"Please do not be alarmed." A voice whispered.
At least some primeval sense told them it was a whisper... in normal human experience, the term would be far too pastel to do describe the sibilant resonance that felt like it was welling up through the earth to settle in and vibrate through their bones.
"I’m here to tell you a Story." The voice continued. "Law keeps me bound as a stone statue as long as a human sees me, so please look away as much as you can. I’m on top of your icebox."
The statement, of course, snapped both their gazes to the refrigerator, where they saw the statue now sitting cross-legged, frozen in mid-wave, with a very un-gargoylish grin on its face.
"This has to be your fault Martha." Stanley said. "Those novels you’ve been writing about Faerie have come to haunt us."
"You’re the one that opened the door and let him in." she replied. "Anyway, he looks, for lack of a better term, friendly... Let’s go look out the window and see what he has to say."
"I can’t look away!" Stanley exclaimed. "If he was really just a statue, that would be one thing, but knowing he’ll be running around the second I look away..."
Martha came up behind him and covered his eyes with her hands, and buried her face in his back, saying "I have to know what is happening, don’t you?"
"Thank you for not looking." the gargoyle said. "You have my word that I will not harm anything of yours in this place... will that help you to trust me?"
"It helps, if the tales of the strength of vows in the Otherworld are to be trusted." Martha said. "I don’t suppose you’d seal that with your Name?"
"Only if you let me use your blood to write it with, but we’re both already married..." the gargoyle chuckled. "Those are the only vows that for which my race uses our Names."
Oddly comforted by that chuckle, both the humans laughed nervously and agreed to try to not look at the gargoyle while he was there. So the morning went from eerie to surreal while they sat looking out at the rose garden while the deep voice spoke to them of its errand.
"One of your writings was brought to the Unseelie Court," he began. "And it was, on the whole, well received. But there was some concern at the message that all darkness was evil and all light good."
"That’s not what I meant at all." Martha rebutted. "The overall timbre of the Courts were spelled out in order to better show the good in the Unseelie and the bad in the Seelie characters..."
"Ah, but the ‘timbre’ of the Courts, as you put it, is exactly the message we’d like you to modify in your next writing." he continued... "It’s not just the individuals in the courts who have both good and evil in them; the entirety of each court also has its good and its bad sides."
"I showed that as well!" Martha said, but didn’t get any further in her argument.
"There is no time for banter, I have to tell you of the Promise of the Eclipse now, while it is happening... otherwise you won’t be able to understand it in your soul." the gargoyle pleaded.
"Promise of the Eclipse?" Stanley asked.
"Long ago, there was no Evil. The other side of this coin meant that there was also no Goodness. Everything just existed without the tangles of morality... Then, something very bad occurred, which polarized the rest of existence into good and evil."
Outside, in the rose garden, the light began to dim, the colors fading from the blooms, the sky taking on a dingy grey cast. The crystal ball in the windowsill cast a picture of the sun on the floor, showing the progression of darkness across its face.
"Even as you see things darken now, so did all of creation fade from its original innocence into the battle between good and evil... War spread across the face of creation even as you see there on the Sun’s face, and everything seemed to be doomed to destruction."
The shadow across the sun reached its fullest point, only a halo of light showing around it.
"Then, when all seemed darkest, the Creators stepped in and wrought a great Change. Goodness and Evil were woven into the fabric of creation so that both were forced to dwell within all things, and follow the cycle of growth and decline."
Then, as the solar disk returned out of the other side of the shadow...
"So it is that Dharknesse always returns and causes the world to fade... it is also bound to recede, letting a new cycle of Lyghte begin... Such is the promise of the Eclipse...
The Queen of Night asks that you incorporate this into your next tale of Faerie, I think you would find it beneficial to do so. Goodbye!"
"Wait!" Martha exclaimed. "Please don’t go!" but, looking back, they saw no sign of their visitor.
The tale was written and well received by her readers, and now, on their new mansion built with the gold they found buried while digging postholes for a new fence, is a gargoyle facing each point of the compass... Sometimes people say they see a fifth one...
Tom Asdell
January ‘03