The Yuletide Wanderer

Five Scents. One Story.

Throughout Emberlore, there are stories of an old traveler who appears when winter has settled deeply over the land and Yuletide is near. In the Commonlands, children are told to look for unfamiliar footprints after a night of fresh snow, while innkeepers sometimes leave a place near the hearth long after their last guests have gone upstairs. Bakers have their own tales, as do merchants, farmers, and travelers who swear that something they desperately needed once appeared at precisely the right moment. Even in the Elderlands, where memories stretch far beyond the oldest human histories, there are those who recognize him when he comes walking beneath the winter trees.

No one seems to know where his journey begins, and the stories disagree about where it ends. They agree on only a few things: he travels every Yuletide, the weather never seems capable of stopping him, and the enormous weathered pack upon his back is always much lighter by the time morning comes.

Most importantly, he never travels empty-handed.

I. Midnight Tiramisu

It was well past midnight when the knock came at the inn door, long after the last traveler had climbed the stairs and the innkeeper had begun extinguishing the candles. Outside, snow had been falling for hours, steadily covering the road until wagon tracks, hoofprints, and the familiar stones marking its edges had disappeared beneath white.

The innkeeper opened the door expecting some unfortunate traveler caught in the storm and instead found an old man standing beneath the eaves. Snow clung thickly to his coat and beard, and a large weathered pack rested across his shoulders, but he seemed remarkably unconcerned about either the hour or the weather.

“You’re late this year,” the innkeeper said after staring at him for a moment.

“The snow had other ideas.”

The innkeeper stepped aside without another question.

There was little left in the kitchen so late at night, but one generous piece of tiramisu remained from supper, rich with coffee and dark chocolate. The old traveler ate beside the fire while snow tapped softly against the windows, and the innkeeper poured something warm for himself and settled into the chair opposite. They spoke quietly about the roads, the weather, and which bridges had washed out since the old man's last visit, although neither mentioned the enormous pack resting beside his chair.

Eventually the traveler scraped the last streak of chocolate from his plate, thanked his host, pulled on his gloves, and shouldered his pack. The innkeeper protested that no one should be traveling in such weather, but the old man merely smiled before disappearing into the snowy darkness.

Only after locking the door did the innkeeper notice the parcel beneath the empty chair.

His name was written across it.

Inside was something he had needed for a very long time and had never once thought to ask for.

II. Golden Ginger Cookie

The baker had already been awake for hours when the bell above her door rang the following morning. Yuletide was nearly upon them, and every surface in the bakery seemed to hold something cooling, rising, resting, or waiting to be wrapped. Among them were trays of golden ginger cookies, fragrant with bright lemon and warm spice, destined for households throughout the town.

She looked toward the door, saw the snow-covered old traveler standing there, and immediately reached for another paper parcel.

“You could at least pretend to be surprised to see me,” he said.

“You could try arriving on a different day.”

She filled the parcel with ginger cookies and pushed it toward him, refusing the coins he placed upon the counter. They had apparently performed some version of this argument before, because neither seemed particularly interested in winning it.

“For the road,” she said.

“They rarely survive the road.”

“I know. That is why there are twelve.”

He left the bakery with the cookies tucked inside his coat and his great pack still hanging heavily from his shoulders. Yet as he wandered through the waking town, stopping at one doorway and then another, the pack gradually began to change. A parcel appeared upon the step of a widow whose roof had begun leaking before the first snow. Another waited outside the home of a family whose youngest child had spent weeks staring through the window of the village toy maker. Something small was tucked beside the door of an apprentice who had been saving for a set of tools he could not yet afford.

Not every gift was grand, and some were downright peculiar. By the time the traveler reached the edge of town, however, there were several fewer parcels in his pack and considerably fewer ginger cookies in the baker's paper bundle.

III. Snowfall Cardamom Latte

Beyond the town, the weather worsened until the road became little more than a pale suggestion beneath the falling snow. By midday, travelers had begun abandoning their journeys and crowding into a lonely wayhouse where the windows steamed from wet coats, hot drinks, and far too many people gathered around one hearth.

The old traveler arrived without horse, wagon, or any obvious explanation for how he had managed to reach them on foot.

Someone found him a chair while the keeper placed a steaming cardamom latte into his hands. Its creamy warmth and fragrant spice filled the little room as everyone argued over whether the road would reopen before morning. The old man listened, drank, and occasionally glanced toward the window as though the storm were merely an inconvenience rather than something that had stranded everyone else.

Around him, troubles quietly surfaced. One traveler had torn the only blanket she carried. Another had broken the leather strap securing his pack and had nothing with which to repair it. A woman traveling home for Yuletide discovered she had enough coin remaining for supper or a bed, but not both.

By the time the old man finished his latte, a folded wool blanket had somehow appeared beside one chair, a new leather strap rested upon another table, and the wayhouse keeper discovered that someone's supper and lodging had already been paid.

Nobody admitted to seeing how any of it happened.

The traveler rose, thanked the keeper for his drink, and fastened his coat.

“You cannot mean to continue,” someone told him. “There isn't a road anymore.”

The old man looked through the window at the swirling snow and smiled as though the road and he had a private understanding.

“There is always a road.”

Then he stepped into the storm, and somehow the winter allowed him through.

IV. Elven Moon Cakes

Far beyond the last Commonlands marker, the path changed. The familiar road narrowed beneath enormous trees whose branches held the snow high above the earth, while moonlight slipped through the canopy and illuminated stones worn smooth long before the neighboring human kingdoms had names.

The old traveler followed without hesitation.

Eventually warm lights appeared among the trees, and an elf waiting beneath an arch of living branches watched him approach. There was no surprise in the greeting and no whispered speculation about the identity of the stranger who had emerged from a storm that should have made travel impossible. Instead, the elf looked at the snow covering the traveler's shoulders and remarked that he was later than he had been the previous year.

“There was weather,” the traveler explained.

“There is always weather.”

“And there are always opinions about it.”

That earned him a smile and an invitation inside.

Elven Moon Cakes were brought out, softly sweet with almond and vanilla, and for a little while the old traveler rested among people who seemed to require no explanation for his presence. They spoke to him as an old acquaintance rather than a figure from winter stories, occasionally mentioning places and people whose names had disappeared from human histories centuries before.

When at last he stood to continue his journey, one of the elves stopped him and placed a carefully wrapped parcel into his hands.

For the first time that night, the old traveler was the one receiving a gift.

He examined the parcel with obvious curiosity, but made no attempt to open it. Whatever passed between him and the elf afterward belonged to a tradition much older than any human Yuletide tale, and neither seemed inclined to explain it.

He tucked the gift safely into his pack, accepted several Moon Cakes for the road, and disappeared once more beneath the snowy trees.

The elves watched him go with the easy familiarity of people who had been watching him leave for a very long time.

V. Yuletide Vanilla Eggnog

Night had returned by the time the old traveler reached the final house on his journey. His once-bulging pack now hung nearly empty against his shoulders, while across Emberlore the things it had carried waited quietly to be discovered.

Some were beautiful, some practical, and others would make very little sense until much later. The old traveler had never been particularly interested in giving people exactly what they would have requested. He preferred gifts that had a peculiar habit of becoming useful at precisely the moment they were needed.

At the final doorstep, he reached into his pack and removed one last parcel. He set it carefully beside the door, adjusted the ribbon, and stood for a moment beneath the warm light spilling from the windows.

Then he turned toward the road.

The door opened behind him.

“Oh, absolutely not.”

The old traveler stopped.

A woman stood in the doorway with one hand upon her hip and the other holding a cup of rich vanilla eggnog. Behind her, the hearth burned brightly, the remains of a Yuletide supper covered the table, and several curious faces were already peering around her to see who had been caught attempting to escape into the snow.

“You have spent the entire night wandering around giving things to everyone else,” she told him. “You can spare one hour to come inside.”

The old man glanced toward the road, perhaps considering whether centuries of mysterious winter wandering had prepared him for an argument he was clearly not going to win.

Then he noticed the eggnog.

A few moments later his snowy coat hung beside the fire, his weathered pack occupied an empty chair, and a warm cup rested between his hands. A child sitting across from him watched with enormous eyes, gathering enough courage to ask the question that generations of Emberlore children had wanted answered.

The old traveler caught the child's gaze and raised one eyebrow.

The question remained unasked.

Outside, fresh snow began covering the tracks leading to the house. By morning there would be stories of unexpected parcels, impossible journeys, gifts appearing where none had been before, and an old man glimpsed walking roads that no sensible traveler would have attempted. In the Elderlands, those stories would be received with the quiet amusement of people who remembered hearing much older versions of them.

No one would agree upon exactly where the traveler had come from, where he went when Yuletide ended, or how many winters he had already spent wandering the roads of Emberlore.

But everyone knew that when the nights grew long, snow covered the roads, and Yuletide drew near, somewhere an old traveler would be fastening his coat and filling his weathered pack once again.

When Yuletide comes, so does he.

The Five Scents

Midnight Tiramisu brings rich coffee and dark chocolate to the traveler's first late-night stop, while Golden Ginger Cookie carries the bright citrus and warming spice of a bakery preparing for Yuletide. Snowfall Cardamom Latte blends creamy warmth with distinctive cardamom spice for the snowbound road ahead, and Elven Moon Cakes brings softly sweet almond and vanilla pastry from the Elderlands. The journey concludes with Yuletide Vanilla Eggnog, rich, creamy, and warmly familiar at the end of a very long winter night.

Incense Options

Choose from 11-inch wood incense sticks, 1-inch wood incense cones, 0.75-inch charcoal incense cones, or 1-inch backflow incense cones.

Story Sizes

Short Story — 25 pieces total: 5 pieces of each scent.
Full Story — 50 pieces total: 10 pieces of each scent.

Each fragrance is packaged separately so the five scents can be experienced in story order, one chapter at a time.

Details

Each Emberlore incense story is handmade and hand-scented in small batches using phthalate-free fragrance. The incense is vegan-friendly and made in the USA using USA-sourced materials.

Five Scents. One Story.

A Note on Scent

Fragrance is subjective, and the same scent can be experienced differently from one person to another. Personal scent preference does not indicate that a product is defective and is not considered a reason for a refund or replacement.