The Yule logs and The Truths We Carve
1601 Words
(December 26 – Boxing Day, 6:03 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.)
Aurora woke before the sun, the way she always had on the day after Christmas when she was a child: heart racing with leftover hope, only to remember there would be no new presents, no parents laughing in the kitchen, no magic left in the world.
Except this morning the fire was still crackling, the quilts smelled like cedar and Lucien, and the silver mark on her collarbone was warm instead of cold.
She lay still, listening12:34 listening to the hush of snow against glass and the deeper hush of the lodge breathing around her. Somewhere far below, a baby whimpered and was instantly soothed. A kettle began to sing. The pack was waking.
She slipped from bed, pulled on thick socks and the midnight-blue cloak, and padded barefoot down the hallway. The great room was dark except for the tree lights and the low glow of banked coals. The Yule log (an enormous section of ancient oak) lay waiting on iron dogs in the hearth, its bark pale and smooth as moonlit bone.
Lucien was already there.
He knelt shirtless before the log, torso painted in firelight and shadow, scars silver against bronze skin. In his hands he held a small knife with a handle of carved antler. He was tracing runes along the wood with the reverence of someone writing scripture.
He didn’t look up when her bare feet whispered across the rug, but his shoulders loosened a fraction.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, voice rough with the night.
“Old habit,” she said. “December twenty-sixth always feels like the world forgot to wake up.”
He nodded like he understood exactly. “For us, today is the real beginning. The Solstice flame is carried in this log. Everything we carve into it tonight becomes truth for the coming year.”
He gestured to the space beside him. Aurora sank down, knees brushing his. The heat rolling off his skin chased away the last of the night’s chill.
He offered her the knife, handle first. “Will you help?”
She took it. The blade was warm from his hand.
“What do I carve?”
“Anything you need to let go of,” he said. “Or anything you want to call in. The mountain listens.”
Aurora studied the smooth bark. Then, with a breath that shook, she pressed the tip into the wood and carved a single word:
Loneliness
The letters looked small and lonely themselves. She carved a second line beneath it:
Fear
She carved a third:
Mark
The knife slipped on the last letter. A bead of blood welled on her thumb. Lucien caught her wrist before she could pull away, brought the cut to his mouth, and closed his lips over it. Warmth flooded her veins like spiced wine. When he released her, the cut was already closing.
“Your turn,” she whispered.
He took the knife. For a long moment he simply stared at the log, jaw tight. Then he carved one deep, slashing rune that looked like a broken circle. Another followed (a wolf with its throat torn open). A third (a tiny child’s hand reaching).
Aurora’s eyes burned. She knew without asking what they meant.
He carved a fourth symbol she didn’t recognize: a circle of wolves surrounding a single glowing star.
“That one is new,” he said, voice barely audible. “Hope.”
They worked in silence for nearly an hour, carving side by side. The fire popped. Outside, the sky shifted from black to pearl to rose gold. Words and runes bloomed across the log like frost flowers: forgiveness, courage, family, home.
When the log was covered, Lucien set the knife aside and reached for a small tin on the mantel. Inside lay a single sprig of mistletoe (real, not the plastic kind), its white berries luminous.
He held it out to her. “Tradition says the Alpha and Luna burn the first berry together. It seals the wishes.”
Aurora took one berry between thumb and forefinger. It was warm, almost alive.
“Together,” he said.
They leaned forward at the same moment and dropped the berry into the flames. It flared green, then gold, then vanished in a curl of fragrant smoke.
For a heartbeat the entire lodge seemed to hold its breath.
Then the front doors (still buried under four feet of snow) rattled as though something enormous had just leaned against them from the outside.
Lucien went very still.
Aurora felt it too: a pressure behind her eyes, a sudden drop in temperature that had nothing to do with weather. The silver mark on her collarbone flared cold, then hot, then cold again.
“The fever’s coming back,” she realized aloud.
“Stronger this time.” His voice was grim. “Third wave. We have maybe until tomorrow night before you’ll need moonlight to breathe.”
He stood and offered his hand. She took it without thinking. The moment their palms touched, silver threads of aurora light spiraled between their fingers, bright enough to cast shadows.
“Come,” he said. “There’s something you need to see before it gets worse.”
He led her through the lodge, past sleeping children curled on couches, past Eira already kneading bread for breakfast. They climbed a narrow staircase hidden behind a tapestry, up and up until they emerged onto the widow’s walk that ringed the roof.
The sky was on fire.
Not sunrise (something far older). Great curtains of green and violet and crimson rippled overhead, so low Aurora felt she could reach up and touch them. The aurora moved like living silk, painting the snow in impossible colors.
Lucien stopped at the railing. “This is the veil bleeding,” he said quietly. “Every hour we delay, it tears a little more. The cult feels it. They’re coming.”
Aurora wrapped her arms around herself. The cold was inside her now, curling around her lungs like frost.
“How long do we really have?” she asked.
“Until the aurora burns itself out on New Year’s Eve. After that, the veil snaps shut forever. No more mates. No more pack children born with the gift. Just slow dying.”
He turned to her, eyes glowing pure silver in the strange light. “I won’t force you, Aurora. If you choose to leave when the snow melts, I’ll open the veil myself and let you walk away. I’ll carry the frost for both of us.”
The words hung between them, heavy as prophecy.
Aurora looked out at the burning sky, then down at their joined hands where silver light still danced.
“I’m not ready to choose,” she said. “But I’m not ready to leave either.”
Something fierce and tender broke across his face. He lifted their linked hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles (once, twice), like sealing a vow.
“Then we steal every minute we have,” he said against her skin.
Below them, the lodge woke fully. Children’s voices rose in excitement. Someone began playing an old record of “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The smell of coffee and cinnamon drifted up the stairs.
Lucien tugged her gently. “Come. Eira threatened to feed my portion of gingerbread to the ravens if we’re late.”
They descended together. At the bottom of the stairs Freya launched herself at Aurora’s legs, hugging tight.
“You’re still here!” the little girl crowed. “I told everyone the mountain wouldn’t let you go.”
Aurora found herself laughing (real, startled laughter that bubbled up from somewhere she’d forgotten existed).
Breakfast was chaos and warmth and too many hands trying to pile more food on her plate. Someone pressed a mug of something hot and spiced into her hands. Someone else draped a hand-knitted scarf around her neck “because Lunas get cold easier.”
By the time the dishes were cleared, the fever had settled into a low, constant thrum beneath her skin (bearable, but waiting).
Lucien found her in the library staring at shelves that stretched two stories high.
“I have a confession,” he said without preamble.
Aurora raised an eyebrow.
He crossed to a locked cabinet, opened it with a key he wore around his neck, and withdrew a wooden box the size of a shoebox. Inside, nestled on faded blue velvet, lay hundreds of sketches (her sketches). Wolves under moonlit skies, children riding on wolf-back, a woman with auburn curls laughing in a field of fireflies.
Every dream image he’d ever witnessed.
Aurora’s knees buckled. She sat hard on the window seat.
“You kept them,” she whispered.
“I kept you,” he corrected gently. “Every night I could reach.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks before she could stop them. Lucien knelt, cupped her face in both hands, thumbs brushing the tears away.
“I’m not asking you to love me yet,” he said. “Just… don’t stop letting me try to earn it.”
Aurora leaned forward until their foreheads touched. The silver mark between them flared so brightly the room lit up like daylight.
Outside, the aurora still burned, impatient.
Inside, two broken people breathed the same air and, for the first time in centuries, believed tomorrow might be worth waking up for.
The Yule log waited downstairs, covered in their carved truths.
Tonight they would light it.
Tonight the real countdown began.
- Writer
