Ghost of Christmas Past

It was Christmas Eve. The cold blasted the scruff on my face as I stared into the fire. It was cold here, but not beyond anything I had experienced in my childhood growing up in the north. The wind, though, was brutal, sweeping south out of Siberia. With few trees to block its progress, it howled like a jet around the yurt, shaking the canvas side before hurtling south.

I, however, was cold inside. I was locked in the grips of despair so deep, I couldn’t fathom climbing out. A few weeks earlier, my wife had told me why we weren't working. The job I was on wasn’t going well - Mongolia was in the icy grip of a white zud, a particularly nasty cold and snowy winter, causing delays when equipment would freeze and be locked in place for days.

The small group of scientists had departed several days before, heading back to families scattered across the globe. With no home to go back to, I had volunteered to stay behind to keep watch over the valuable equipment. Insomnia had been my constant companion and I was to the point where sometimes I would wonder if what I was seeing was reality or hallucination.

I looked up from the blazing fire and I saw her in the distance for the first time - or at least the first time I could recall. Her hair was the color of fire; that unique orange/red. Her skin was pale, nearly white. She stood tall, proud, and her eyes were fixed on me. She was also completely naked and unashamed by that.

I blinked and she evaporated.

Fuck, I need some sleep, I think to myself.

I kicked snow over the fire and opened the yurt’s flap, stepping into the dim interior, lit only with the light from the wood stove. Sleep found me fast in my bedroll that night. As the wind howled outside, driving the snow before it, I dreamed.

She came freely into my dreams that night. One moment I was reliving a moment early in my childhood, then next she was there, sitting next to me on a stone bench in a park I didn’t recognize. Her flame-red hair danced in the breeze. She turned at looked at me, green eyes boring right through me.

“Cneasai, why do you sit in the dark?” she said in a melodic voice.

I remember the confusion. The puzzlement. What did she call me?

Her eyes softened.

“Child, you are a creature of light, why do you sit in the darkness alone? Do you not know your purpose?”

At that moment, I would have given anything to know what she was talking about. She frowned and stood, towering over me.

She reached one long, graceful finger out and touched my cheek.

“You sit in the dark, child, doing dark things. Come to the light. You have a purpose here. The same purpose you have had life after life. 

She bent and kissed my forehead.

I awoke, trembling. The yurt was dark and the fire burned low. I sat up, carefully inspecting the interior in my flashlight beam. It was empty. I stood and opened the yurt flap, casting the flashlight beam to and fro into the darkness beyond.

Nothing moved except the wind and snow.

She was gone, at least for now. Instinctively, I knew it would not be the last I saw of her.

I was right.

While this doesn't seem kinky, this was the definitive incident that led me down a kinky path.