The Fire In The Lake

It was winter forever. The trees were white , the ground felt like permafrost. The rivers and the streams that flowed into the lake eventually froze but we could get water to drink and to boil.

We had cauldrons and our wise ones tried to divine why it was always winter.

The forest surrounded a frozen lake, and what surrounded the forest we did not know or had forgotten.

The light was the same , a permanent twilight.

There was a mystery in the lake , well under the solid ice. Sometimes the lake ice became coloured almost as though it were on fire , but that was of course impossible.

We could make our own fire to keeps us warm and to cook the food we harvested or killed, but every day we still waited for the sun.

We pleaded with our wise ones to divine spells to bring back the sun , but they told us that they had exhausted all the spells and divinations and nothing had changed.

Wandering out on to the frozen lake we were sometimes rewarded with the colours of fire far in the depths , but no warmth or heat came through and if the fire was real it would surely melt the ice on the lake.

Always enquiring and thinking we are not an unintelligent or uneducated group , but eventually one of us posed a question:

"Has the Sun been captured , and has it been imprisoned under the ice in the lake?"

It sounded so stupid. We knew the sun was mobile and crossed the heavens, but then rumours started spreading about “the circle” . No one seemed to know what it was or where it started, but it spread that the circle would free the sun.

This started hope within us but we didn’t know how this would come about.

We went out on the lake in groups and we noticed that the more of us there were the more the fire in the lake seemed to get brighter. As we were on the lake some people started to hold hands to help keep each other warm and there seemed to be a positive change in the intensity of the fire in the lake.

Thoughts started turning into actions bigger groups started going out onto the lake and all held hands , someone said they thought the could feel a warmth coming through the ice and there were signs at the centre of the lake of of maybe thawing or cracks.

What if we all got together in a circle of the lake , held hands and called for the sun to come back , do we think that the sun would rise and dispel the winter? If the sun is held in the lake and released we may all be in very cold water if the ice we are standing on breaks, although if we are lucky we will not fall in and be able to walk back to the shore.

Everyone gathered and the proposition was put forward, and although people were not sure this was an answer, there was no better option , and if it failed then we would have to look elsewhere.

So everyone gathered on the lake in a circle holding hands , hoping for something to happen to bring the sun back. The fire in the lake was now very red and coming close to the surface, the centre of our circle. We wanted the sun to return , to warm us, to give us back our seasons.

All of a sudden a column of flame split the centre of the lake and rose to the clouded twilight sky and then the clouds started to disperse and there were signs of blue and light above us. The ice held. Were we finished?

We waited.

We waited.

We waited.

And the sun appeared, we had succeeded.

We didn't know how , but the sun grew warmer as the circle dispersed, and there were smiles on every face.

We had come together in the face of adversity and we had brought our land back to life , by finding the sun through our unity and trust in each other.

The lead music is "Under The Ice" by Nazz , featuring Todd Rundgren