Fragments on Death

The Vekarine and her two immediate children, the Svepparine and the Ideldine, are the core ways we relate to death through the Family. To describe the differences between them, we say:

The Ieldine is regailed in ice and stone
The Svepparine in rot and in worms
Their mother [the Vekarine] is clad in paper and bone
And together they swallow the world.

The Ieldine, sometimes called the "cold death", is easy to misunderstand. Cold is not inherantly deadly; cold preserves, as well as being an essential part of the life cycle of many organisms. While the Ieldine plays a part in those cycles, it's important to understand that:

Cold death is not a blizzard. Snowfall is motion, heat, an energy that can give rise to life. Cold death is the endless stone halls of the Vekarine, covered in ice that has been there for a thousand thousand years. It is glass-fragile leaves and ponds frozen solid and nothing ever changing and silence, silence, silence.