1.31.19 Hello! With part of the US experiencing a very cold winter, I think it would be fitting to post a short story from  Christopher Evans. The Rites of Wintera short story by Christopher Evans ‘And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night’ A. E. Housman There were heavy snows that November, and by the turn of the year Stella’s supplies of fuel were running low. She was forced to collect brushwood from the countryside surrounding the village and celebrated her twenty-second birthday with mild frostbite of the hands. She kept a fire burning in the main room throughout the day, banking it up at night so that a residual warmth and even an ember remained when she rose the following morning. It was just as well that the inn was empty of guests and she did not have to provide extra fires; it would be difficult enough to survive the winter as it was. The bleak, bitter weather reflected her inner state of mind. Her husband, Thomas, had died that autumn, a withered, exhausted …