12 Days Of Christmas At The Falls | Cozy Bedtime Story | Rewind

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For more information, visit nationalrail.co.uk slash faresfree. Teasing season exclusions apply. Welcome back to Night Falls, the bedtime show of classic and original stories designed to guide you into a calm and peaceful sleep. I'm Geoffrey, and tonight, I'd like to tell you about the run up to Christmas we've been enjoying here in the Falls. Whilst the snow has been coming to blanket the ground and the pines have been permanently crystallized with glittering frost, my days seem to have begun echoing those in the song the 12 days of Christmas. Seems the magic of this place may have something to do with it. A dusting of snow had peppered the mountaintops for weeks already. But it wasn't until 12 days before Christmas that the first heavy snow began to lay in the clearing. There are no natural phenomena that bring me quite as much peace as the thick blanketing of snow on frozen ground. I've never known quiet like the quiet of the mountains in the thick of that winter. The snow soaked up sound for miles and miles around until there was no chaos and no noise to clutter the clearing around me. The first snow always felt like it offered a new beginning. A chance to breathe, to rest, to recoup. Though fresh snowfall was always welcomed by my friends and I, the cold that often accompanied it would, for that Christmas at least, be made to wait at the door. On the first truly cold December day, my friends and I gathered around the campfire and joined hands, breathing in the warmth of the flames and lifting our hands skywards to send that heat up into the heavens. When we had finished reciting the incantation that Lyra had taught us the night before and insisted we commit it to memory, the result was something of a crystal dome stretching over nightfalls. My friends and I could pass through its walls whenever we needed to, but it would keep the cold and the snow out of the clearing for the duration of the winter. By the time afternoon rolled around, it was as though my friends and I were sitting in a snow globe, or rather the inverse of one. Snow fell softly beyond the crystal border carved out by our incantation, and we cozied up together, warm and dry by the fireside, bubbled up in a way that I felt just as festive and just as excited for Christmas as I had in my youth. It was really no different to sitting beside the hearth in my dad's hotel, only this time the love of my life had her head resting on my shoulder, and my dearest friends were always allowed to stay for tea. Wanda had elected to stay for Christmas. She had made no promises about New Year's Eve, or what would happen when the calendar reset once more. But if the wide smile plastered on her face each morning was anything to go by, it was safe to assume our brilliant new friend was here to stay. It was beginning to seem rather as though she and Aliyah came as a pair. I scarcely caught one far from the other side, and I had come to understand why they fit together so well. Where Lyra had the tendency to launch herself into life head first, Wanda much preferred to use her head to think things through. Lyra was quite the storm at times, and Wanda was temperance, as calm as the surface of the lake in summer, and as steady as the river that flowed into it. The pair had made it their business to decorate the falls for Christmas, and Lyra did so the best way she knew. By planting seasonal seeds and bulbs for the holly bushes and mistletoe, I was used to seeing on Christmas cards all around the clearing. The two women set to work early in the morning after I had finished preparing their breakfast, and by mid-afternoon the bright red berries that accompanied holly bushes were already beginning to bloom. Wanda hung green, red and gold lanterns from the branches of the trees. She wasn't unaware of Nightfall's magic, or Lyra's talent for making the plants themselves glow with starlight she had siphoned from the sky above, but insisted that some things were best done the old-fashioned way. That night the reds, greens and golds of Christmas glowed all over the clearing. Gold burned from the lanterns that hung in the trees and abbed off of the stars in the night sky as Devani and I set to sleep on the beach. It was twelve days before Christmas, and I got the sense that with each passing day I would be sleeping deeper and deeper still. On the second day of Christmas, I thought to get into the festive spirit myself. I wasn't sure if it would work, but the bars to the famous song ran in my head over and over. On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two turtle dubs. It wasn't like me to get a tune so caught in my head, and I thought perhaps the magic of the falls had a hand in getting the tune so stuck in there, for the threads of the song seemed to snag on each one of my thoughts and weave their way into every moment of my day. The sun had barely made it into the sky that December morning before I found myself, sanding down the logs I had originally dried out to throw into the campfire and fashioning them into a birdhouse. When I finally brushed the sawdust from my knees, I picked up the little nesting home I had cobbled together and set it down at the edge of the woods. I hammered the post supporting it into the ground with a heavy stone I'd found just for the purpose, much to the amusement of Devani, Wanda, Lyra and Anwen, who were rather surprised by my sudden interest in sustaining Nightfall's bird life. I didn't hear my plans with them, for I had a sense the magic would either lend me a hand, or that by mid-afternoon, the birdhouse would have made for a nice feeding spot for the robins and warblers that already roosted in the surrounding woodland. I could hardly keep the smile from my face when Night drew in with it two turtled doves. Devani and I were already settled on the beach gazing up at the stars when she noticed the birds fleshing out their new home with thick moss from the woods. I see, she laughed, humming out the tune. On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two turtled doves. As we drifted off to sleep that night, I thought that the song had sounded much nicer coming from her mouth than it had in my head all day. When morning rolled around again, Wanda and Lyra seemed pleased to find the turtled doves cooing softly from their new nest. Wanda did her best rendition of the cooing noise she had spent far too much time perfecting as a girl guide and told us at length about the badges she managed to collect before she left for a university. I was coming to love Wanda rather a lot but often got the sense that she did herself a disservice. For every word she said against herself, for every time she reminded us that she much preferred an easy life, preferably cozied up indoors, there she was tending to the fire and teaching us how to track animal footprints through the forest. Wanda seemed to discount the skills she had picked up simply by reading but I'd wager that even if she only knew how to track prints through the forest from tales of archaeologists tracking ancient humans across dried up plains, that her knowledge counted for more than she knew. Her wisdom, lifted from the pages of a book or not, even meant she could lead us to Otto's friend the Stag, whom I got the sense he had been missing terribly. From decades spent studying how ancient civilizations had lived off of the land with what little resources they had, it turned out that Wanda knew better than any of us how to exist out in the mountains. Wanda Renato had fast become friends. He had learned that though she liked a big lunch and a long, large dinner to pick over, she didn't much care for breakfast. Instead, Wanda preferred a small bite and a strong coffee. The rest she dropped and waited for Otto to hoover up. I was sure she thought I hadn't cottoned on to their antics, for her efforts to give him her leftovers grew less and less clandestine each morning. I might have worried about the dog's health with all the extra scraps he was getting, but with winter heavy and harsh beyond the clearing, I sawed it perhaps a good thing that he got a little thicker in the fur. In any event, he had spent so much time bounding between nightfalls and the cottage where Lyra and Wanda hold up each night that I could be sure he was in need of the extra treats. On the third day of Christmas, Wanda went with Otto out across the clearing and into the mountains in search of his friend the stag. I sensed a shift in the schnauzer, a worry that wobbled in his tail, replacing the excitable wag I had come to expect from it. When the dog nudged at my toes with his snout and then lifted his paws over his ears like he had horns of some sort, I realised that he might have been worried for his long antlered friend, who had to have been spending winter out in the cold beyond the borders of our incantation. Wanda offered to go in search of Otto's friend with him, and though Lyra was reluctant to see them off into the woods without her, it was clear that Lyra, Devani and I, would only have slowed the pair down. Otto followed his nose, and soon enough his sniffer led our brilliant new friend to clear cloven hoof tracks frozen into the mud. The pair couldn't have been gone for more than an hour, and when they re-emerged from the thick of the pine forest, they'd found not only the stag, but not one, not two, but three other deer. Two fawn and a beautiful doe. Apparently the stag's antlers had grown even more impressive over the winter months, and who doubt Otto was expecting his own antlers to come in any time soon. As Otto and Wanda returned through the boundary around Nightfall's, the crystal-like walls they saw around the clearing fizzled, glittered, and made way for them to trot back into the warmth surrounding the campfire. I'd not anticipated the two French hens that bolted out of the pine forest after them, and dashed into the clearing before the glittering boundary could restore itself behind them. Two French hens, I chuckled, sure that the magic of Nightfall's had cottoned on to my games and had begun to play along. We hadn't had any livestock in Nightfall's before, and in truth, we hadn't too much use for it. My friends and I much preferred to live off of the land, and Nightfall's forest offered a bounty of fruits and vegetables for us to be getting along with. I was however glad to have the birds around. I've always rather liked chickens, and I thought they might make excellent companions for Otto. Chickens are flighty, flightless birds full of character after all. Chickens were brave, bashful, peckish, and plucking in one moment and cowering, dashing off and deserting the next. Otto struck me as similar, all bark and no bite. The two French hens had dashed across the clearing and begun pecking at the crumbs around the campfire before Wanda had even had time to take off and shake out the winter coat Lyra insisted she button herself into before she set off across the mountains. Lyra had always tended to put herself first, and I liked that about her. She was nothing short of brutally honest about her desire to take care of number one, and that unwavering honesty, that commitment she had to herself, was something I found admirable. But that cold winter morning when she had shrugged her warm hand-stitched coat from her shoulders and insist to Wanda wear it out into the mountains instead of her own thinning and frayed one, taught me that Lyra would have done anything to ensure Wanda was as comfortable as she could be, and perhaps to ensure Wanda would stay. I could tell she wanted Wanda to see how wonderful the falls could be when spring blossomed across the mountains, and summer thawed the final frost. I could sense that something bridging beyond friendship was beginning to stretch between the pair, but I kept tight-lipped on the matter, such that Lyra would consider it none of my business, even if the prospect of seeing my dear old friend so happy brought me more joy than I knew what to do with. Otto seemed very much content to have his friends safe and warm in the clearing, and made it known with a wide, swooping tail wag that lasted through to tea time. When we had finally finished clearing away the dinner plates that evening, and enough food had been set out to feed the stag in his family, I noticed Lyra beginning to hum a tune I rather recognised. It took me right back to my childhood, to the choir lessons at school I had pretended to dread, but had truthfully always rather enjoyed. I hummed along with her, and soon Devani joined us. The tune of jingle bells rang out across the clearing, and it was hard to keep the grin from plastering itself across my face when Wanda added a rather harmonious line, and I did my best to stoop down to the baseline. When our voices had grown tired, we sat to bed. Devani and I tangled together on the beach, and slept even deeper than we had the night before. I think perhaps we might have slept right through till noon the next day, had we not heard the same soft bars of jingle bells being sung back to us by the birds in the treetops. On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me four calling birds. Devani murmured. I couldn't help but mark that there was a good deal more than four birds calling out our song to us that morning. The rest of the day bumbled by in a blur as my friends and I settled into the holiday spirit, cozying up by the fireside, tucking into Lyra's very own mulled wine, and cracking open our booze. I made a secret trip out into the woods, hoping my friends wouldn't notice my absence as I did my best to convene with the magic of night falls in private. I wasn't much of a craftsman myself. My hands were too big, and I tripped over my own thumbs whenever I tried to make anything too detailed. But if we were to keep to the lyrics of the song, the very next day I hoped to gift Devani five gold rings. I wanted to gift her the five gold rings mentioned in the famous lyrics, but in the form of gold bangles instead, a little bit of creative license. They would go along with the ones I'd seen her wear on special occasions in the past. I hoped that the magic of the falls might be able to help me with such an endeavour, or at the very least grant me a path back or forward to somewhere or someone that could. By the time I reached the thick of the forest, and stopped worrying that my friends might overhear my footsteps in the undergrowth treading away from the campfire, I noticed the bangles already sitting atop the stump of a fallen tree. It was as if they'd been waiting for me all along. A cool breeze blew through the clearing, and the few leaves still clinging to the trees rustled and danced softly. Beneath that sound, I thought I heard the forest, and indeed the magic that frequented it uttering, you're welcome. I hadn't expected things to come so easily. I was used to entertaining the magic's games and letting it tie my thoughts in knots whilst I tried to decipher its meaning. I supposed that in the spirit of giving, the magic had granted me this one wish without fuss or complaint. Perhaps because it loved Devani just as much as I did, and saw the gift might bring a smile to her face. I hid the golden bracelets away in my pocket, and made my way back to the beach. Devani and I settled to sleep once more, and when she began to stir beside me the very next morning, I wished her a happy fifth day of Christmas, and asked for her hand. Close your eyes, I asked, and she did in part, leaving one cracked half open. She eyed me with suspicion until I slipped the five gold bangles onto her wrist, and her other eye flew open. Are they too big? I fussed. Not at all, she assured me, and to prove it she wore them around the clearing for the rest of the day. The strange goings on in the clearing continued. On the seventh day we awoke to two white swans swimming in the lake, drifting peacefully across even more peaceful waters. They looked as though they belonged on the glittering cover of a Christmas card, the kind that arrived in the mail, and seemed to have been sensed straight from the pages of a fairy tale. I didn't see ten lords leaping on the tenth day of Christmas, but I did catch Otto and his friend the stag, bounding over the stream after one another. They seemed to challenge themselves to step further from the water's edge each time, and made the leap required to cross to the other side bigger, until, I assumed, one of them was unable to make the jump, and ended up splashing into the water. I often wished I could understand the rules of Otto's games a little better. From quite sure there were rules. There seems to be some unwritten law on when to halt, and who ought to chase and when. I think if Otto isn't moving, the general idea is that no one can see him, and he has become entirely invisible. I've also gathered that if he bounds from side to side, then you ought to be doing so too, and that you should also attempt to stop bounding at exactly the same time as he does. The song goes next, on the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me eleven pipers piping, and that is indeed what Wanda offered us. At least it sounded as though there were eleven of her when she got her bagpipes out. Though my friends and I were glad of her efforts to play a Christmas tune for us, it sounded as though the racket was coming from all around, and if I'm really honest, we were even more glad when she finally stopped playing. Lyra in particular struggled to keep her laughter contained, and as the two women wandered home that night, I thought I heard her cackling, well, practically howling with laughter as Wanda attempted to play the tune once more on their way through the ravine. The sound bounced off the rock face, echoing across the mountains and causing what could only be described as audible chaos. Thankfully there were no avalanches. On Christmas Eve when we went to bed, I pulled the vanny into me and whispered, just to be clear, I know we said we weren't doing present, but I might take that to mean we are in fact doing presents this year. I checked. Yet she snickered as though it were obvious. I got you a present anyway. She hummed before drifting off into the deepest sleep yet. I was like, oh, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. 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