February in the north was the month of returning light.
Not warmth. The cold remained serious and committed and entirely without apology. But the light changed in February, the days noticeably longer than December, the quality of the afternoon sun shifting from the flat grey of midwinter to something that carried, for the first time, the faint suggestion of a direction it was heading.
Elowen noticed this every year and had for as long as she could remember, the specific quality of February light, but this year she noticed it differently. With the particular appreciation of someone for whom the returning of light was not a metaphor but a lived thing, who had been in the dark in the real sense and knew what it meant to feel the day begin to extend again.
She had been the Bond Welfare Advi
