She arrives before the light does.
In the deep, iron cold of January’s end, when the ground is still locked and the trees are still bare and it seems, as it always seems at this point in the year, that spring is a rumor rather than a promise. She comes. Not dramatically. Not with thunder or storm or the kind of announcement that the harder goddesses make when they arrive. She comes the way the first morning light comes – quietly, from the edge, a brightening that you notice is already happening before you can name the moment it began.
The snowdrops are up. The ewes have milk. The days are longer, just barely, just enough to feel. Something is stirring in the ground that was frozen solid a month ago. Something is stirring in the creative self that went dormant in the dark.
