You aren't sure how you arrived at this place,
But as if in a dream,
Here you are on the longest night of the year.
You're standing on a vast step surrounded by low rolling hills which are hugged by a ghostly wide shroud of snow.
An otherworldly emptiness of the landscape brings with it a calm that stills your soul.
Nestled comfortably behind you,
In a crook of one of the hills is a yurt where you've been staying.
The warmth and the comfort of the yurt beckon you back inside,
But despite the bitter chill,
You start walking out into the peaceful night.
All the scents have been sucked out of the air,
Leaving only an icy crispness.
Nothing burns like the cold,
But at the same time,
Nothing purifies like the cold either.
The icy air makes your breath hover around you in a strange,
Slow motion cloud.
The stars illuminate one by one.
In the clear air,
They're brilliantly bright.
Soon,
You can gaze at the whole grand ferment of stars and constellations and you can imagine what you cannot see.
Infinity.
You start walking towards a small lake to your left.
An indigo ice sheet covers the lake and it gleams and reflects the glimmering stars under the night sky.
All the stones on the edge of the lake are encrusted with a rhyme of ice crystals.
Suddenly,
Without any warning,
An unseen hand switches on the aurora borealis.
They appear like rippling,
Green,
Neon,
Evanescent waves swirling inward and outward.
Now,
In another part of the sky,
They're pulsing like ribbon streamers,
Then shifting and whipping into threshing,
Quick,
Jerky movements,
With shreds of lights sifting into green,
Yellow and purple.
The waves of colours hover downward,
Almost touching the hills,
Then whirl aloft again into remote regions of the atmosphere.
The glassy surface of the lake exquisitely multiplies all the beauty before you.
You are transfixed and spellbound for a long time by the flickering dance.
Then finally,
The shimmering dissolves,
Leaving only the dusty trail of the Milky Way.
It feels as if you've been close to paradise.
You breathe deeply,
Grateful for the experience and now intensely aware of the cold.
But with a warm heart,
You turn around and head back to the comfort of the yurt.
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