Margaret Davies rises with her husband at two (not quite three hours after they went to bed) on Christmas morning. Bran dresses himself quickly and carefully and drives down with Will to Tywyn church. Margaret pulls on a housecoat and goes down to the kitchen to begin the Christmas day baking.

The path leads, in the end, to an area that seems to be farmland, although it lies muddy and fallow, now. A middle-aged man is bending over the engine of a car, adjusting it with a wrench and his gloved hands. He's positioned an electric torch to give himself more light than the late-afternoon winter sky is providing him. He looks up to adjust ( Read more... )

It is late afternoon on Clwyd Farm when Owen returns from Milliways. Bran is expecting him for dinner now, but instead, Owen crosses the fields to John Rowlands' cottage.

Owen does not go home until well after dark.

Owen rises before dawn every morning. There is work to do, of course, and the sheep will not wait. This morning he rises even earlier, boiling tea and heating milk and porridge over the stove. When the porridge is ready and the tea has steeped, he taps gently on the door of the other room.

At Clwyd Farm it is almost dawn, Christmas Eve morning. Owen Davies is sleeping in a chair in the kitchen with the light on. Lluchddu snores behind the chair ( Read more... )

( Back at Clwyd Farm... )

[Immediately after thisOwen emerges from his chest of drawers with a blue sweater, a black sweater and a pair of wool trousers. He offers them to the woman ( Read more... )

[After this thread]

When Owen returns to the cottage, he turns on all the ground floor lights before settling at the kitchen table. He does not even bother to make tea.

Owen Davies and his son are walking home from the Evans' farmhouse in the darkening evening. They are speaking of nothing in particular -- new lambs, road improvements, Jen Evans' excellent dinner -- when a thread of strange, high harpsong blows through the chill, damp air.