In the beginning, the Land of the North was the most beautiful place in the world.
The mountains, those mighty titan spirits of ancient days, stood guard against the horizon, their stone peaks outlined with icy glaciers. The great firs were just below, climbing up the walls of the fortress, boughs heavy with the burden of snow. To the north, past the mountain fortresses, the glimmering calm of the fjords, and their children the rivers winding frozen paths back towards the innermost lands. In the windless stillness of the dusk, the bare branches of trees feathered with powdery snow reached out towards the sky, glittering drops of ice hanging suspended from them.
The howls of the grey wolves making camp for the night resounded in the silence.
The fragile crystal snowflakes hovered in the air, free for a moment only to be subsumed by the white expanse below.
And the sky, the darkening dusk sky full of stars, was alive with the shimmer and flicker of light in turquoise, green and rose, the dance of color echoing the joyous revelry of the angels.
It was upon this sky that two eyes gazed from the center of all this beauty. The gray eyes belonged to a figure garbed in splendid raiment, clothing that might have been woven from those very dancing lights. The figure itself bore the appearance of a man, only bigger and brighter and more splendid than any man ever would be (for no men walked the earth in those days—that came later). His skin was living bronze, his hair a silver flame, and golden light followed his every footstep. Beside all this, his clear gray eyes seemed limp and lifeless. And so they were—at least, as lifeless as the eyes of an immortal being can be.
His name was Sonneillon, and he had been wandering the frozen landscape for he knew not how long. He knew nothing of time. In Heaven, there had been no day and night, only a pure, sweet light shining at all times, bright enough to live by but soft enough to sleep by. Here on Earth, the light was dim, and it arrived only to fade soon after it had come. Days, months, years he may have wandered—all seemed only a twinkling compared to eternity.
At the fall, he had been too paralyzed with shock to feel the grief of separation. He remembered lying in a pit for some time, unable or unwilling to comprehend the magnitude of his current situation. If he moved, he knew that reality would be impossible to ignore or dream away. But his whole being had craved the light—he felt he might die without it—and so he had lifted himself out and faced the dim light of a noonday sun. He would soon find everything on earth to be dim, dull, and bleak. But dim light was better than nothing at all. He wondered how Lucifer would be able to stand it. Lucifer, the bearer of light himself, with his dazzling smile and his spirit that drew in all who came near, who Sonneillon would have risked his life for—had risked his life for, in fact—had been consigned the worst punishment of all: the ruler of the Realm of Darkness. Sonneillon's heart ached at the thought of his friend suffering under such torture.
Even though he knew all along it was futile, that pain, and the sick longing for love and light, had driven him to all the corners of the world, searching for a path of some sort to find his way back home. Elyon could be cruel and merciless in his judgment, but had Sonneillon not felt his love? Before everything had changed and Lucifer had torn back the veil that had been clouding their vision since time immemorial, hadn't the Source of Light been full of kindness and tenderness? Surely, surely he must have made a way out of this dim prison. He just would have to find it. And so he'd searched every patch of ground, swam in every deep, at least a hundred times over-and a hundred more, to make sure he'd missed nothing. All the while, he'd lifted his beautiful angel's voice up to Elyon in praise and repentance. The reply was always silence, and his songs gradually became softer, shorter, and more mocking. Finally, they were replaced by curses. There really was nowhere to go. He was alone—the creator he had worshipped faithfully for all eternity had made his fallen brethren invisible to him. And the dim sunlight rose and set each day, an almost comical shadow of his former life.
He'd come back to the north just as splendid as he'd been as the day he'd arrived, but in the time that had passed, something in him had gone. His eyes, which had once borne the spark of the eternal Light of Heaven, had deadened. And as the eyes had gone, so the soul had gone as well. Sonneillon was now merely a brilliant shell enclosing a heart emptied of love and hope. His home was lost to him forever. He was cursed to an eternity in a dark, imperfect world with no soul to call a friend. And worst of all, he was cut off from the Source of Light—though, since he had proved to be such a vengeful and tyrannical ruler, perhaps that last wasn't so terrible.
Sonneillon stood still in the middle of the wintry landscape, eyes fixed on the Northern Lights. Of all the places on Earth he'd traversed, this remained the only place that came even close to reminding him of Paradise. The pure white snow reflected the sunlight, making the whole land seem illuminated from within, and the Lights, he knew, were the colored trails the angels who had not been banished left behind them as they soared through the cosmos. But that night, the sight of these somewhat familiar things did not comfort him—it pierced him through the heart.
"WHY?" he screamed, his voice an echoing shriek in the silence. "ELYON, WHY MUST YOU MAKE US SUFFER SO?" His screams soon became choking sobs.
"We loved you. We worshipped you, from the first age, and when we wanted a reward for our longsuffering, you—you—cast us out like filth from your perfect Kingdom! The only home we ever knew." Moans poured from his lips—his ability to speak intelligibly had left him, crazed as he was with hurt and rage. He had known the truth for a long time.
Elyon had never meant them to be his children, but his slaves.
A wave of revulsion passed over his gargantuan frame. He had never known pain in all the eons of his existence, and now it seemed that it would consume him. The pain swirled around with anger, forming one titanic force that swelled inside him. If he did not let it out, he would be destroyed by it. But destruction—would that not be better than an eternity of suffering? Resolving that it would be, he held his form rigid, awaiting with a grim anticipation the moment of his implosion.
Unfortunately, his calculations were wrong.
The blast produced a burst of light and fire that could only be compared to the death of a star, on a much smaller scale. A cloud of black and grey smoke raced across the sky in all directions from the center of the explosion, filling the air with a dark, ashy mist. Sonneillon's limp body was flung through the sky and onto the steep face of a mountain. His form had shrunken considerably, and the skin of bronze and hair of silver had been replaced by sickly pale bluish-gray flesh and long, snow-white locks. Just like on the day of the fall, he lay motionless, worried that movement would confirm what he was most afraid of—still being trapped on Earth. But just as before, his entire being, weak and feeble though it was, ached to behold light, even if it was the dim light of the sun. Out of sheer will—his strength had left him almost entirely-Sonneillon gathered the power to open his eyes—
And beheld only darkness.
Fear crept into his heart. This darkness was more total than any he had ever experienced during his sojourn here. But the alternative to night was unthinkable, so he forced himself to remain calm and wait till the first stirrings of morning.
Yet morning never came.
And so it was that Sonneillon went blind.
And so it was that the fallen angel who had once been the most loving spirit in the pantheon of Paradise became the Demon of Hatred.
As for the black cloud, and the terrible flash of light—they were bitterness. From that bitterness, the Northern Wind was formed. Chilling and merciless, it eagerly sucked the life out of everything it touched, leaving only blocks of ice in its wake.