High above the snow-covered peaks, in the thin upper air where lightning flared purple-white in the winter night, the shimmering sphere was born.

It glowed. It moved.

Far below, there was a gap in the pine forest.

In the wide clearing stood a timber farmhouse, with thick grey smoke coiling out from its one chimney. The smoke did not rise further. It settled downwards, as smoke often does in the Nameless Land, and it stained the snow between the pine trees a perpetual grey. By reason of this greyness the farmhouse was called Graahuset, the Grey House, although originally it had been called Asleksseter, after its builder Captain Soren Aslek who had left the sea but could not bear to settle in a town. Now only the captain's two aged sons lived here, unmarried, two dwarfish withered old men with faces as grey as the smoke from their hearth.

On this night, as on all others, the two ancient brothers sat in their separate chairs and brooded over things past, while the dull glow of the log fire slowly faded. Occasionally Carl puffed on his wooden pipe. Sonni merely sat there. The brothers had not spoken aloud to each other for days; they had nothing to say. They only continued living together because they knew no other life.

* The complete story will be included in 'Work in progress' - a proposed short story collection which I am submitting to a US publisher. More news soon?