With a roar that shook the rafters and a hiss as cold as the North wind, Jólakötturinn, or the ‘Yule Cat’, has come to visit Firnost.
In it’s wake, it has left the imprint of massive cat paws – larger than an elephant’s marks, spready and deep, and with the hint of claws – in the soft snow that covers the Garden in a white coverlet. The snowy cover is marred where a bush was pulled out by the roots and dragged, leaving a trail of broken leaves and a few traces of dark red to stain the snow. Several trees show the rough marks of being scratched by claws like sabers, leaving deep gouges in the wood to bleed sluggish sap down into the snow, and here or there, blows of a lashing tail the size of an anaconda have knocked branches free of snow. A keen eye may spy the scattered marks of far smaller paws littering the snow around the huge feline prints.
There are a few patches where not only is the snow missing, but the grass below dry, brittle and dead, seemingly drained of life – these, approached by normal man-sized footprints in the surrounding snow.
Inside, the Garden window has been shattered, although the glass is all cleaned up by now, and a makeshift window repair in place – in fact, it looks like solid ice spreading across this window, cloudy and hard to see through, but blocking the wind and closing up the hole.
Murmurs around the hold speak of a faceless man, an Eshu with a visage of shadow and shade, who confronted the fell Winter’s Cat, and drove it back through the hedge maze… gone, at least, for now.
Reference: The Story of the Yule Cat
