The Winter After the Gods

This was such a cold place for so long. The winds blew us around, turning every corner into an ordeal of gritted teeth in the face of the howling storms. The snows and the cold rains reshaped the landscape around us; the fogs and mists came down and stole our world away. Making this land we thought we knew into some strange foreign landscape where nothing was the same or familiar.

We huddled together, hiding under furs and as close to the stuttering fires as we could manage, eking out a living from the frozen ground and the few animals that – like us – managed to survive.

We thought it could not get worse. We knew either we had abandoned the gods, or they had abandoned us. Of course, in places like this, far from the centre of the Empire, the gods do not have a hold on the people they have where the priests can enforce compliance. Our last priest died a long time ago, even before the coldest of this long winter began. Some laughed and said the gods took him before the worst of it. The rest of us laughed because we saw it proved there are no gods and there never were. Those that doubted were soon persuaded as the winter tore everything from their frozen hands: everything they cared about and all they held dear, taken by the cold and the dark.

But now… now the spring returns, slowly and tentatively. Even the snow no longer falls as the days grow longer and we wonder if the gods will return. Now the roads are passable once more, we wonder if the capital will dare send us another priest to make us recant the error of our heathen ways.