"Mom, when's Christmas?" Luna's oh-so-innocent question threw me for a momentary loop, as I tried to come up with a good, satisfying answer. By now, thanks to the chaos after the Change, I had lost any real grasp of the date, mostly because it had simply ceased to matter. Dates were only needed to coordinate with other people and now, after the change? Who would we coordinate with in order to need long-term plans that required specific dates to work out? Even the other survivors suffered from this, they, too, were focused on day-to-day survival, while their long-term plans weren't bound to specific dates but worked with the seasons. For them, it didn't matter that the supplies for the winter were gathered before some arbitrarily chosen date, it mattered that they were gathered before the snow started to fall. Similarly, keeping track of weeks, or even the days within the week, had largely ceased, it didn't matter whether it was Sunday or Wednesday, you did the work you could do on the days best suited to it and everything else was secondary. Plus, it wasn't as if there was a Sunday service to attend, at least not that I had heard of. Which might be for the best, I still remembered my misuse of Astral Power unleashed by prayer to a God who didn't listen, so who knew who or what might be able to use the power unleashed arbitrarily in a similar fashion?

"You know, I don't really know," I admitted, realising that there wasn't a real way to change my current ignorance, "But I don't think it really matters, I certainly don't want to celebrate a holiday focused on a God I can't even name."

She looked pensively for a moment, with a lot of disappointment in her gaze, before shrugging, "What are we going to celebrate instead?"

"Well, did Lady Hecate tell you what her preferred celebration would be? If not, we could celebrate the Longest Night, though I'll have to try and see if I can figure out a way to sense which night it would be. Though we might have to find a nice theme to celebrate, there are still far too many people who think that Darkness and the Night are things to be afraid of, silly as they are," I suggested and while the pensive look remained, the disappointment rapidly faded away.

"How would that celebration look like?" she asked, now getting interested, as evidenced by the growing smile on her face.

"Whatever we want, obviously," I grinned in return, "Traditions have to start at some point, though I honestly doubt that we would start one. The problem we'd face is, any celebration comfortable for us, or rather, comfortable for Lia and myself, would be fairly uncomfortable for the average person. While my dislike for all things Fire has largely been diminished, there's still a part of me that disdains it. Similarly, the Sun is something neither Lia nor I will ever be fully comfortable under unless we manage to perform deicide," I explained, my grin growing even wider at the idea, if that was at all possible.

"You know that there are easier ways to get rid of divine curses?" Luna asked in response, her eyes narrowing with a mix of suspicion and amusement. "You could try sincere and humble penance, a quest to restore the Light of Lady Sunna to the World," she suggested, her voice dripping fake sincerity, though she didn't manage to keep up the act and started giggling before she managed to get it all out.

"Certainly, I'm sure Sunna would love nothing but to return me to her oh-so-loving embrace by way of a pyre," I responded, turning Luna's giggles into outright laughter.

"Mhm, maybe deicide would really be the easier option," she considered for a moment, before shaking her head and returning to the original topic, namely, how would we want to celebrate the Longest Night?

A few ideas were thrown around, though the problem was, how did one celebrate the night and the Darkness in an, at least somewhat, communal fashion? All the ideas we came up with, or rather that we borrowed from our previous experience in regards to celebrations, had elements of light or fire in them, be it a bonfire lasting through the night, candles or even fireworks, there was always that accursed fire in the concept. Similarly, communal activities as developed by humans needed to be performed in the light, simply because human eyes were fairly bad, leaving them utterly blind while in the dark.

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So, new ideas were needed, ideas based on Darkness and Magic, though we might involve a torch or two, simply because Lady Hecate's symbols included torches to guide the way, even if they could readily be considered metaphorical. Maybe there was a way to include moonlight if we desperately needed some sort of illumination, or maybe I could find a way to copy the lightless illumination, as contradictory as that sounded, of the Astral River and put it into physical reality. That idea sounded like an interesting one and something I might want to discuss with Lady Hecate because this might turn into some sort of celebration at least partially within Her sphere of influence and thus associated with Her name.

Amusingly, the conversation didn't stay between Luna and me, though that was mostly because we had started to talk as we were walking back from one of our experimentation sites and reached the tower without bothering to lower our voices or make an effort to keep people from overhearing, which was exactly what happened. Then, when realising what we were talking about, Maggy was her usual, unapologetically enthusiastic self and joined in, which caused a chain reaction.

Soon, the discussion that had started between two people had grown to involve some twenty-odd people, which, curiously, was also about the entire population of the tower and the annexe I had created to house our students. Truly, a marvellous coincidence that everyone had their own ideas of what the ideal celebration would look like, though few of those ideas were even remotely realistic.

Still, I could see that both Lia and Luna were getting into it with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, their happiness enough to bring a smile to my face. The only real problem I could see was that I'd have to find a way to determine which the longest night would be so we'd be able to properly celebrate it.

Just as I was contemplating how that problem could be solved, a notification window opened up in the middle of my view, causing my eyes to widen as I read.

Quest Alert!

The Longest Night

Difficulty - Indeterminate

Lady Hecate took notice of your plans and decided to sponsor them. Hold a celebration worthy of Her name and you shall be rewarded.

Reward - Favour of Lady Hecate, depending on the worthiness of your celebration.

Looking around the room, it didn't take a genius to guess that I wasn't the only one who had received the quest. Apparently, having a loud and enthusiastic discussion within Lady Hecate's shrine could cause the deity to take an interest and, as nobody with any sense would have thought, celebrations, especially those of a regular nature, could be turned into religious observations, what a genuine shock. Or rather, I should have seen that one coming a mile away and yet, I didn't really mind, especially as it meant Lady Hecate might be willing to lend a hand with a few of the more arcane ideas I had in mind, given that She was sponsoring the thing.

Still, a sudden quest, especially one with such a wide-ranging and potentially ominous reward being given out without warning needed to be handled. Luckily, it looked like Maggy was already on the ball with that one, happily restoring the semblance of order we had enjoyed before the blue window of information had ambushed us, allowing me to remain in the shadows, right where I wanted to be.

Watching how the mix of consternation, excitement and a bit of fear was addressed and gently handled until only the excitement remained was quite impressive, reminding me that Maggy, while a bit of a magical dunce, was an incredibly competent social operator, far beyond anything I could readily accomplish. Sure, I could be a lot more intimidating than she was, but that was only by virtue of my far-greater magical might, something the locals hadn't grown accustomed to yet. At some point, people would grow used to magical displays and I wouldn't be as intimidating as I currently was. Or maybe I'd remain as intimidating, simply because I had no plans to become an average magic user, my plan was to remain at the top and that would mean I would always remain intimidating. Especially if I managed to create that dragon form, but that was a problem for some other time.

For now, we had a celebration for the Longest Night to plan.

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