Join the Circle of Light

The children were sitting in the room, bored. They were waiting for a New Year surprise from the adults, but neither the surprise nor the adults had appeared yet… Stefan couldn’t wait any longer and had fallen asleep. Luckily, the hotel they were staying in was quite interesting.

Al had already examined all the walls and was now studying the clock. On the dial, instead of the usual number 12, there was a 0. It stirred thoughts that tangled and overlapped.

“Listen…” he said suddenly. “Why do people even say that a year is a wheel?”

“Because everything comes back,” said Sofay. “Winter, spring, summer, autumn—and then winter again…”

Al shook his head.
“Yes, but not exactly. Last winter was different.”
He paused and added,
“And I was different.”

May looked at him attentively.
“So the wheel isn’t about sameness?”

“Exactly,” Al said, perking up. “It’s not ‘the same thing.’ It’s like…”
He grabbed a cola bottle cap and sent it rolling across the table.
“Look. It’s spinning…”

“…but it’s moving,” Erica interrupted.

“…and the place is already different,” Al finished. “Yes!”

Sofay thought for a moment.
“That’s probably what people noticed during Yule,” she said. “On the longest night of the year.
The sun seems to stop… and then it turns back.”

“But you can’t see it right away,” said Erica.

“Yeah,” Sofay nodded. “But the moment of turning has already happened.
The light is still weak, but it’s definitely returning.”

May smiled.
“Yule isn’t a celebration of ‘hooray, it’s all over.’ It’s the moment when something clicks and…”

Al lifted his head.
“So Yule is when the wheel turns, and the New Year is when it starts rolling?”

“Well said,” May laughed.

Al looked at the clock again. The minute hand lazily twitched and moved by a millimeter. Why is it that when you’re waiting for something, time always stretches so much…

“Then time isn’t a wheel, it’s a road,” Al said. “And the wheel rolls along it.”

“And the hand,” May added, pointing at the dial. “It doesn’t go back.”

“Right,” said Al. “So time has a direction.”

The clock showed 23:30.

“Then it turns out,” said Stefan,
“the wheel is one…”
“…but the road is different every time,” Al finished.

And suddenly—BANG!
Light flared in the windows and ran across the ceiling.

“It’s started!” Al shouted.

Everyone ran to the window. Fireworks filled the sky with bright stars.
And the clock quietly clicked. The hand twitched again—this time the big one—caught the small one, and together they stopped at 0, forming a strange shape: a chubby body, nose pointing upward, like a rocket.

Al turned around and, noticing this, said, “Look—seems like our rocket is ready for launch.”

“So zero isn’t ‘nothing,’” May smiled. “It’s the start.”

The fireworks kept booming, and time rolled on.

Happy New Year!

(And no one asked any more questions that day.
Because sometimes it’s enough just to be—and to notice.)