Hermit's Wood
It is autumn, the ninth evening of the season of farewells, darkness palpable in the thick of Hermit’s Wood, so called in honour of the restless necromancer who hunched in his hut, withered and wise.

Low, baleful moans and piercing whistles resound through the denseness, rumoured to be made by age-old phantoms pining for blood or respite; nobody knew which – sad, old souls of those who chanced to pass through the wood but never reached the end.

Quiet susurrations from the pine trees and the half-naked boughs of trees penetrate the funeral taciturnity of the wood; calling any lost and weary travellers forward, deeper into the heart of the wood, away from life and its comforts and into the same dreary existence like their own. “Come with us! Come with us!” echoed the whispers.

Slivers of moonlight flickered on the leaf-littered ground, crunchy and dry, illuminating many different paths leading away from the entrance of the wood; placed there by the hand of a divine entity whose sole aim was to torture tired mortals.

Look! The silver streaks quiver and dance with anticipation of the coming dawn, anxious for something to happen, yet certain that it would destroy them, whatever it would be.

And there it is! The very first glimmer of a radiant dawn, the faint pinkish glow just above the shadowed horizon, giving a tell-tale blur of colours to the sky.

"Leave us! Leave us!” cry the trees, yearning for the choking darkness of the night.

But “No!” says the sun, too impatient (and obstinate) to wait any longer.

The rosy clouds, shimmering treetops of the wood, absence of piteous moans and anguished howls, and the cratered silver orb that was the moon which presided over the land many a night, all contributed to the first news bulletin of the day – dawn had arrived.

“Fly, darkness!” shouts the sun, reaching out its blinding rays of light to warm the prickly top of the wood. “Your time of majesty has ended; a new power, of light and all things fair, is rising”.