The people love him. That bright spot in the darkness that is her son. She watched from the side, from the shadows. She was like that, once. That was a long time ago.
As a girl she played on the ice, fighting off the cold with each step she took. The family would be leaving soon. They would set off from their home as they do twice every year. They go to follow the moon, content to live in the darkness for the love of the god they worship. The girl doesn't hate the moon, but oh does she hate the dark.
She's called back to the house. They would leave for the boats soon. There was nothing that could make her turn from this though. The light peeks over the horizon and floods her eyes, filling her with its warmth. She reaches, stretching her fingers wide, trying without hope to capture some of that brightness. Her mother calls again, insistant and out of patience. A cloud rolls over the rising sun and the light fades. The girl sinks with a shiver as the wind bites at her skin. She would not see the sun again until the next migration.
Her efforts to catch the light were not all in vein. It lives in her. She carries it close. When the cold nights steal all the warmth her smile gives it back. Her laughter could lead someone through the deepest darkness. Though what nobody could miss was her eyes. Two bright suns lived within them, always searching for more light.
This core, burning hot within her thrashed against the confines of her home. The burden of her quilts weighed her down as she piled more on to ease the chill. Her parents complained when she lit too many candles, chasing away those always creeping shadows.
There was a time, a short time, between the endless night and the next migration, after the long darkness and before the first sunrise, that light snuck into her people's world. The girl would spend every second of this time outside. Her world of black and white and grey was painted with the soft pastels of morning. Bundled as she was, she delighted in the dawn's pink hues. If she climbed highest hill, to the very top of their arctic land, she could bask in those trickling rays until they fled behind the horizon again. At the end of the light, not the day, there were hours left until proper night, she would go back down. Back to bright her brightness home.
"One day," she thought, "one day I will have my home in the sun".
Shadows have their way of creeping in. The girl consumed by sunlight and wrapped in warmth died that cold night on the ice. It wasn't an instant death. She fought and clawed and clinged to the radiance that made her. It did not matter. She faded.
The woman stands now, cold and dark and distant. She was everything a queen of her people should be. She watched her son, her sun, warm and bright and brilliant. He was everything she should have been.