sounds like hallelujah

The lion isn't sacred when not sleeping near the lamb The strange sensation of gazing down upon a mirror of home: the world a white blanket spread out far below. Pale up to the horizon, where it met a shifting sky. The Aurora was a haze of light on the pale feathers of Korri's wings. It hung above him always, gauzy strings of colorful light, no matter how high he flew. A part of him wanted to join it, dance in it. Another part was content merely to soar beneath, wings cupping the frigid air, as he watched the colors play on the snow beneath. In part, Korri searched (as always) for black wings against the snow. His ears twitched in the direction of every faint noise, hoping for the sharp cry of his raven's voice. But he knew she was nowhere nearby. She remained absent from his mind, an aching void which even the lights of the aurora failed to soothe. Korri was getting tired. His flight path dipped low. Not at any one point, but gradually. His breath plumed behind him in a silver cloud; the ground loomed up, pristine. But then Korri noticed tracks. Paw prints. His wings scooped down and he began to rise again, frowning a little with concentration. Tracks? But massive. He rose again, just high enough that he could still see them, and followed the trail, his wing beats the only sound in the night. Something played in the back of his mind: some half-forgotten thing his mother had told him once a thousand years ago. Something imaginary; something he still saw clearly as day. The image of a dappled grey stallion, vibrant as a storm cloud, toiling through a blizzard. Toiling through tracks left by some great beast. Wolf tracks. Korri was thinking of this in the idle way one thinks of daydreams when something loomed up out of the dark. Something like a piece of the sky: color and darkness. Shadow and light. Cousin to day, Korri thought before he could stop himself. Not here… But he circled around and began to spiral down, his ears up, his landing soft in the powdery snow. There, several paces away, he stared. Still: still as a doe caught in the gaze of a wolf. But the stranger Korri faced was not a wolf. It was a horse at the end of wolf tracks, a horse with great wings spread and echoing the sky. A massive horse. Korri felt his heart beat hard inside of his chest. He breathed out. His voice, when he spoke, was soft. The chiming of a low golden bell. "Gott kvöld, úlfur." The words rushed out in a white cloud, foreign in this place and foreign, too, on Korri's tongue. His mother's language. The language of his gods. Head tilting slightly, he breathed in. It is evil when it eats unless it's feeding from the damned.

unsplash