rask In winter, the winds no longer bring warmth from the equator. The gales no longer throw ice and stone across the plains.
A man can walk the chipped slate without fear of being ground to dust, but the stagnant air drinks the heat from a traveler's very soul.
Alexi's boots scrape through the dead rubble of his homeland under the dark sky. Winter sees no sunlight, but even the summer is dim.
There is a day in the summer when the star that gives heat to this planet actually crests the ridge of mountains to the south.
The worst of the storms are pushed north, and the winds subside for a few hours. The farmers emerge from their hardened concrete homes.
Neighbors meet for feasts and dancing. For exactly forty-one thousand six hundred and sixteen seconds, everyone lives outside.
The pleasant -10C temperature of the summer festival gives way again to the -40C average of summer. Winter brings dreadful lows.
Those few seconds of light must last the 403 local days until next year.
Alexi's people were modified generations ago for this climate. Physical modifications had to be made to survive in the cold dark.
The internal clock of the body needed to be rewired so that Alexi's people no longer looked to the sun for biological regulation.
