Week One

The Early Winter Storm has settled over Runeheim like a sulking god determined to remind us all of our insignificance. The winds don’t simply howl; they accuse. They claw at the shutters each night as if demanding to be let in so they can personally ruin whatever remains of my peace. The rains batter the earth with a steady, relentless cruelty, and the rivers have grown so swollen and rage-filled that even looking at them feels like tempting fate. There will be no reaching the city market anytime soon. We’re stranded at home.

Inside, my home has become the perfect proving ground for despair. I clean one thing, only for something else to fall apart. Clutter migrates like it has a mind of its own. My wards do little to help my mood; Dong pacing like a caged beast, Damascus muttering his half-formed philosophies, and Cass trying to out-perform the thunder with theatrical readings of his newest poetic catastrophes. Every time he compares himself to lightning, I feel a part of my spirit physically wilt.

Aurelia fares no better. She’s been obsessively cleaning around her forge, as though order might somehow hold back the storm’s madness. Her wards; the trio of elderly sages whose sole purpose seems to be dispensing commentary no one asked for, hover at her shoulders offering advice like, “Your spine will regret that posture,” and “Have you considered warming your hands more gently?” One of them said “Fire is a responsibility, dear” and Aurelia nearly dropped her hammer on her own foot.

They’ve begun drifting into my house when they tire of harassing her. I walk into the kitchen to find old women rearranging my spice shelf out of pity, murmuring things like, “She tries, bless her.” I don’t know whether to thank them or throw myself into the violent river.

Morale reached its lowest point this morning, until, miraculously, there was a break in the storm.

A sudden hush.
A stillness.
A crack in the sky where a weak, watery light trickled down like some divine tease.

Not a word was spoken. We all simply looked at each other; and bolted for the door.
Dong charged out first, barefoot and triumphant. Damascus lifted his face to the sky like he’d forgotten what fresh air tasted like. Cass tried to proclaim something poetic about rebirth but got cut off when he slipped in the mud. Aurelia sprinted out of her forge, hair wild, waving her hammer like she’d been released from captivity. Even the three elderly ladies shuffled out as quickly as their joints allowed, gossiping excitedly about “good omens.”

For one fleeting moment, it felt like freedom.

A breath.
A reminder that we are not meant to live like trapped rats.
And then the sky snapped shut.
A single, mocking boom echoed overhead before the heavens unloaded everything they’d been saving.

Sheets of icy rain came crashing down in an instant. Dong screamed something unintelligible. Damascus tripped over a stump. Cass yelled about “divine betrayal.” Aurelia cursed so creatively I’m certain it summoned a minor spirit. The old women somehow moved faster than all of us, herding everyone back inside with surprising authority.

Now the storm is back, angrier than before, as if offended that we dared to enjoy ourselves. The winds rattle the walls with renewed fury. Everything is damp again—clothes, floors, spirits.

Hope feels like a foolish, expensive luxury.

Still… I write this down so that I remember: there was light today. Brief, ridiculous, stolen light.
If the Early Winter Storm wishes to grind us down, it will have to try harder. I have lived through worse than weather—though admittedly, those things didn’t involve being trapped indoors with lunatics and elderly critics.

If tomorrow brings even one moment of calm, we will run outside again.

Lunatics or not.

Even if the storm laughs at us.

Week Two

The Early Winter Storm has now dragged into its second miserable week, proving that it is not a passing tantrum of the sky but a full, calculated act of cruelty. The winds have settled into a pattern—less dramatic, but somehow more oppressive, like the slow exhale of something colossal waiting for us to break. The rain continues its assault, sometimes soft as whispers, sometimes vicious as thrown stones, but always present.

It’s becoming less of a storm and more of… a condition of life.

Inside the house, the atmosphere has soured like spoiled milk.

Dong has stopped pacing and now stares listlessly out the window as though willing the weather to change through sheer resentment. Damascus has entered a phase I can only describe as “prophetic despair.” He sits by the fire making vague pronouncements such as, “The river remembers who we were.” I don’t know what that means and I’m afraid to ask. Cass has fallen into a creative slump, which would be a blessing if it didn’t mean he’s now wandering around sighing dramatically—loudly, constantly, with the weight of the entire world compressed into each exhale. If he sighs one more time near the cooking pot, I swear the stew will sour out of spite.

Aurelia is beginning to fray at the edges. She’s still working at her forge, but the spark in her eyes has dimmed to something brittle, like she’s carefully rationing her sanity. Her trio of elderly matrons, however, remain unwavering in their campaign of well-intentioned torment. This week alone they have: rearranged my kitchen twice, refolded all our blankets incorrectly, informed us daily about the hazards of “sitting too gloomily,” and tried to teach Dong how to knit “to quiet his spirit.” He nearly cried. Truly.

What bewilders me most is their unfazed determination. Storm or no storm, they shuffle around offering commentary on everything from our posture to our emotional deficiencies. One of them told me my aura looked “wilted.” I didn’t know whether to apologize or weep.

The brief break in the rain last week has not repeated itself. We keep hoping for another sliver of sunlight, but the sky remains adamant. Even stepping outside for a moment results in being pelted with sideways rain that feels personal. Yesterday, Cass attempted to open the door to “taste the air for omens,” only for a gust of wind to instantly blow mud into his face. I’m choosing to believe that it was a gift from the gods.
Supplies are holding, but tempers are not. Conversations devolve into arguments over nothing—how many candles should be lit, whether the fire is too hot or too cold, whether Damascus’s “mystical insights” are actual insights or hallucinations from boredom. For the record: they are hallucinations.

Emotionally, I feel… thin. Not in a poetic way; gods forbid I start sounding like Cass, but stretched. Worn. The kind of tired that settles behind the ribs. Every morning I wake hoping to hear silence outside, and every morning the storm assures me that hope is foolish. Early Winter has always been harsh in Runeheim, but this storm feels different. Heavier. Old. Like a memory repeating itself.
Still, we endure. We complain, we bicker, we despair; but we endure.

If Week Three brings even the faintest glimpse of sunlight, I fear we will fling ourselves outside again with even less dignity than last time. And if the sky chooses to betray us once more, well… At this point, we may deserve it.

The Early Winter Storm continues.
And so do we – begrudgingly.

Week Three

The Early Winter Storm has dredged up memories I had long pressed to the back of my mind; storm-torn days that shaped me long before Runeheim ever claimed a piece of my life. Tonight, with the winds rattling the shutters like a persistent ghost, I find myself thinking back to one storm in particular. I must have been nine, maybe ten. Tomaso a few years older. Aurelia only eleven, all skinny elbows and stubborn fire, clutching her father’s oversized cloak around her shoulders.

We were crossing the channel between Hestralia’s coast and the open sea; a trip we’d taken countless times. Tomaso’s uncle (my father) captained the ship, a man who swore he could smell storms the way others smell wine. But even he didn’t smell this one coming.
It swallowed us whole.

One moment the sea was calm; uneasy, yes, but calm. The next, a wall of black clouds rose on the horizon like something alive. I remember the sound most vividly: the crackling roar of thunder so fierce it felt like the sky was splitting open. The waves heaved beneath us, lifting and dropping the ship with violent indifference. The deck became a battlefield of slick ropes and shouting sailors.

Aurelia tried to be brave. She clung to my arm with one hand and the railing with the other, chin trembling but stubbornly raised. A little spark of fire in the middle of all that chaos. Tomaso, ever the silver tongue even then, tried to coax comfort into both of us with soft promises:
“We’ll make it,” he said. “Storms don’t win unless you let them.”
His voice shook, but he said it anyway.

A wave slammed the ship sideways. Aurelia slipped. I lunged to grab her, but she was small, too small, and my fingers brushed only air before Tomaso caught her hood and yanked her back with a strength I swear he didn’t possess yet. He held her against him, shielding her with his whole body as if the sea itself were gunning for her.

We huddled together behind the main mast while the crew fought the storm tooth and nail. The rain stung like thrown sand. The wind tore our voices away. The ocean clawed at the hull. At one point I truly believed we would all be dragged under and claimed by something ancient and hungry.

But the ship held.
The crew shouted.
The sails screamed.
We endured.

I remember the moment the storm finally broke: a thin sliver of morning light piercing through a tear in the clouds. The sea, moments before a raging titan, suddenly rested like a spent beast. Tomaso laughed first; a sharp, disbelieving sound, and Aurelia, still shaking, buried her face against his shoulder and sobbed. I just leaned against the railing, soaked to my bones, watching the sky soften as if it hadn’t just tried to kill us.

That storm taught me something I didn’t understand until years later:

Sometimes survival is less about strength and more about stubbornness.

About holding on; literally, in Aurelia’s case, until the world stops tearing itself apart around you.
Tonight’s storm outside is nowhere near as monstrous as that one was. But it has the same taste of something ancient, something testing us. And remembering that day with Tomaso and Aurelia reminds me of a truth the sea carved into me long ago:
We have weathered worse.

We will weather this.