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The silent god of the falling snow passes by,
and all the world sinks to their knees at his beauty.
—excerpt from the traditional hymn to the Winter God
Deathly Sleep was certain that it was the carcass of an ox, preserved perfectly under the ice of the frozen lake.
“Is it sleeping?” the young Winter God he was in servitude to asked him innocently, dark eyes focused on the black mass under their feet, and Deathly Sleep would have almost smiled at the childlike question had the answer not made him somber. “How far the reach of your magic is!”
“It is not I who caused it to sleep,” Deathly Sleep said patiently, and the Winter God gazed at him with those round eyes, his expression that of perfect confusion, as the former knelt down on the ice and examined it the best that he could. The Winter God held his breath and watched, fascinated, when Deathly Sleep finally stood up and told him that the animal was, indeed, deceased.
— — —
All of the villages that they had passed in their long, long journey were in agreement about the severity of winter this year. Even the other gods seemed to concur with this statement—at least those that the couple have met on the road. Everyone agreed, but they hesitated to do anything about it, because it just meant that the young god who ruled over this season was growing splendidly into a divine being who will be worthy of his name in a few cycles. It was an auspicious thing. If the Winter God grew well, he will soon be able to handle his power better.
The Winter God and his Deathly Sleep were born without names, perhaps unusual for a god and his other half, but as a general rule, gods who preside over the seasons are only referred to by the season they had dominion over. Thus, the Winter God is only ever known as the Winter God, even by others of his rank, and the dark-clothed servant that was always by his side was only known by Deathly Sleep—a name that referred to the state that most creatures underwent during the long cold. Not death nor sleep—but it might fool the untrained eye if one were to gaze at a creature who succumbed under the spell that Deathly Sleep cast over them. They were created together out of nothing, and therefore they did not know what life is without the other. They loved each other dearly, married and intertwined to the very cores of their being, and Deathly Sleep cannot stray very far nor very long from his god without it paining him physically, like a knife in his chest.
— — —
One who laid eyes on Deathly Sleep—if indeed they had the ability to perceive the spirits of the Far Side—one who had the Sight might describe their first feeling of looking upon his face as a terrible, almost deadly calm. In his normal form, Deathly Sleep was tall, even taller than the pointed hat that the Winter God wore, and his hair was pale, pale, pale, unnaturally so, that when the snowflakes fell on it, one by one, they seemed to melt into it. Upon his hair rested the hood of the simple, dark traveling cloak that he wore, though the cloak that he wore seemed to be made of an unearthly material—one can describe it as almost like smoke. Because of the cloak, it made it very difficult to tell any other distinctions of Deathly Sleep’s form. His eyes were as blue as the frozen sky.
Unlike Deathly Sleep, who was clad very simply, however, the Winter God was clothed in a breathtaking robe of white and silver brocade, his huge sleeves weighing his arms down whenever he reached to touch something, and a giant conical hat was upon his head. The veil that hung from the hat frosted his dark hair, and made the expression on his round face inscrutable to the unworthy eyes who tried to lay eyes on his divine features. Without the hat, the top of his head only reached Deathly Sleep’s shoulder. A small, round, golden bell hung from his waist on a red thread, and it tinkled sweetly everytime he moved to signal the presence of the god. Right now, his feet were bare in the snow, and he held Deathly Sleep’s hand with his smaller one, always leading him along, always eager to see the world as they traveled.
— — —
The Winter God never tired of the sights, even though they made the exact same journey every cycle. Next winter, they will start this journey all over again, over and over for the foreseeable future, or at least until the world meets its end. The Winter God did not mind. He hated being asleep for the rest of the year, and reveled in his surroundings when the power of the Autumn God slowly wanes and he was finally freed of his brilliant dreams—dreams that Deathly Sleep made sure to maintain for the duration of his god’s slumber.
After letting the Winter God admire the carcass of the ox trapped in the ice, they traveled on through wild and beautiful country, a forest of white trees, all stripped of their leaves and raising their branches in adoration of the god that passed through them now. This stretch of the journey was enchanting, if entirely silent—the only sounds that they have heard since entering the white woods were the calls of strange birds, who seem to have flown out of reach of Deathly Sleep’s magic, because no matter how many times Winter God looked around and looked up to find the birds, he never seemed to see any. Or perhaps he just didn’t know what to look for. Deathly Sleep, even with his naturally stoic nature, found this naivety to be rather adorable, and would patiently describe the birds to his god over and over after every failure. The Winter God would end every search not the least bit frustrated, though he did show a little disappointment at not being able to behold the objects of his search. “I wonder if they hate me so,” he would often mourn, “to hide themselves from my eyes like this.”
“No creature on earth will ever hide itself willingly from your sight,” Deathly Sleep replied. “It is I that they are wary of, however, and we should not fault them for that.”
— — —
They made their camp for the evening under the branches of a particularly fine young tree, her arms gracefully supporting the Winter God’s weight when he decided to climb up and perhaps see more that way. Their bodies did not need to rest at all, but the Winter God’s wish was to prolong the journey as much as possible, and so the two of them employed a method of travel that is, to the extreme, humanlike—on their feet, covering only a few thousand steps every day, and then settling to make camp every night. Of course, every tree, bush, blade of grass, or creature is only so willing to accommodate the Winter God and his pale-haired companion, in the hope of being blessed by close proximity to the young god’s brilliant countenance. Even on a moonless evening like this, the god’s skin shone faintly, almost as if he was the brethren of the Moon Goddess herself.
Now that the darkness of the evening clothed him, Deathly Sleep removed his cloak, revealing a dark-colored robe underneath, and much more shockingly, perhaps, a gigantic pair of black bird’s wings on his back. Even as he walked around and his wingtips dragged along the ground, however, they did not make a sound, and it was actually with the aid of such appendages that Deathly Sleep managed to slip through the air silently whenever the situation called for it. The Winter God loved his Deathly Sleep’s wings very much, and because his normal form as a god did not include the wings, sometimes he would transform into winged creatures when bored and flit through the air happily. Usually, he took the form of a fuzzy white long-tailed tit, his round body looking so much like a puff of snow when he tired of flying and settled on a branch. Of course, in that form, Deathly Sleep adored him, as he always did, and many a time he would spend just cradling the Winter God’s bird form in his hands and softly caressing the beautiful white and black feathers.
— — —
Tonight, they were content to just remain in their current bodies. Deathly Sleep made a comfortable bed on the ground and they lay in it, tightly snuggled against each other, perfectly fitted against each other’s bodies. Now that he had taken off his veil and hat, the luminescent blush on Winter God’s round face was obvious as he embraced Deathly Sleep and softly raked his fingers on the glossy black feathers on the latter’s back. Taking this as his cue, Deathly Sleep just wordlessly turned on his side and carefully unfolded his free wing over his smaller god.
Whenever Deathly Sleep spreads his enormous, jet-black wings over the two of them like this, and lets it envelop the Winter God, like a beautifully-warm blanket of feathers, the Winter God knows that he is somewhere safe.
— — —
They spent the evening whispering to each other, blatant and quiet words of love, their lips meeting the distance between them at times, their voices blending together almost sounding like a song, or perhaps like a prayer. The darkness of the sky slowly deepened, each star revealing themselves shyly like flowers in the absence of the moon, and when the winter wind whistled blithely among the branches of the trees, the Winter God graced it with a small fond sigh of greeting.
“What kinds of dreams do you see when I place you under sleep?” Deathly Sleep asked his god, when they were soft and pliant in their love for each other, and the Winter God paused for a little, and whispered back, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears, “I see dreams of the two of us together and apart, over many, many different lifetimes, and all of them are joyous and effervescent and radiant and sorrowful and dismal and heartbreaking all at once, but in all of them I had you, and that was what I desire the most, out of anything in this world.”
— — —
Deathly Sleep looked into the Winter God’s face, and he found that he, too, desired nothing else in the world—to be reborn, perhaps, into many different selves into many different universes, finding each other again and again, to love and to hate and to love yet again—
[“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai, ”
sings the prosecutor on the piano and the smaller, warm figure beside him,
and outside, from another time and another space,
the fireflies glittered as they floated off into the deepening night.]