Happy Yule-tide

I can hear the folk in the house beneath my room, making ready for their celebrations. I can smell the roasting meats and the sweet fruit tarts and the decadent, brandy-soaked pudding. No doubt they have pooled all of their humble resources from the whole, long year to prepare this magnificent feast. I know I will find no sleep tonight, as they will make merry till dawn, and I will hear the fiddler rousing them all to dance, and the house will tremble with their dancing feet, and the walls will echo with laughter and song until the sun rises. I know they will be filled with feasting and drinking and joy for the year they have survived, and hope for the year to come. And I will sit here and think that I do not feel sorry for myself at all. That I don't wish they might remember that a woman lives above their heads, quiet and out of the way, with no wish to disturb their merriment. And that I don't believe that my face is what makes me so very easy to forget about, lest they feel that it might be charitable to invite me down to join them, even for a quick glass of cider. I will not think these things. I will watch the moon outside my window, and think that I am glad that there are people in the world who are happy, and loved, and filled with joy. Even if I am not one of them.