“In the mountains, we believe that the Earth was born in Winter. Everything was cold and dark, and the sun only rose for a few hours each day, too weak to manage much else. Winter might have been beautiful then, and she might have been cruel, but there was no one there to see or feel, and so instead she was just lonely. She watched the Sun coming and going and asked him one day why he didn’t stay.

“‘There is nothing for me here,’ he said to her. And so Winter thought long and hard about what she might do to keep him in her skies. First, she made the North Wind. She was a powerful thing, and for a time her company was all that Winter wanted. Eventually, however, she remembered why she had breathed the North Wind into life, and so she sent her daughter on a journey far across the world, to see if there was anything that caught the Sun’s attention. The North Wind was gone a long time, and Winter began to worry until her daughter returned one day just after sunset.

“‘I have watched the sun for a year,’ she said to her mother, ‘and nothing pleases him.’

“This grieved Winter, and Winter’s grief cut the North Wind to the quick, for she loved her mother.

“‘The Sun is warm,’ she said at last, trying to cheer her mother up. ‘And you are cold. Perhaps if you make something warm, the Sun will stay.’

“Winter thought about this, and at last saw the wisdom in her daughter’s words, and so she created the South Wind. The longer the South Wind blew, the longer the Sun stayed in her sky, and Winter rejoiced, for the Sun loved her and she loved him. Together, they made Summer, and life bloomed across the world.

“But as life grew, Winter faded, and at last she realized the terrible truth. The Sun’s love burned too hot, and if she stayed with him, she would die. So, Winter made a pact with the Sun. For the sake of their child, they would part, and Sun would visit Winter for only a short time each year. The children Winter bore in these times were Spring and Fall, and Winter loved them, but she was not happy, for the time passed too quickly and she never saw Summer again.

“The North Wind stayed with her, for she was Winter’s first daughter, and the most loyal, but her mother’s sorrow made her bitter and cruel. One day, tired of grief, she blew into the heart of Summer and plucked a rose from her bosom to bring back to their mother. The rose should have died, but the strength of the North Wind’s conviction froze death, and so it bloomed, spreading across the ice, Winter’s only living memory of her lost child.