PRELUDE
THE GODDESS AWAKENED slowly from her cold sleep,awareness returning as the chill blanket of the passing season fell away. Turning with imperial grace, she sought the life-giving force of the renewed sun.
Soon she felt its warmth upon the long and gravelly beaches of her coastlines, and upon the stagnant expanses of her low, flat marshes. Slowly, the sun drove winter’s blanket from the rolling moors and tilled fields.
The white mantle remained thick and heavy among the forests and glens of the goddess, and the highlands still showed no sign of acknowledging winter’s end This was all as it should be, and the goddess rejoiced in the growing vitality of her body, the earth.
She had grown smaller, of late, but her strength was great. Her lands, though threatened, were in the capable care of her druids, and even the harbingers of the new gods treated her with a certain deference. In the Moonwells—places where her power flowed directly from her spirit to her body—water of high magic lay clear and pristine among thick pines, and in rocky clefts.