» In the End

Eira... She wasn’t really afraid, but the little blue orphan with the blue, shag-pile coat didn’t feel very comfortable amid the winding, swollen sea of sweat and voices (of flesh and humidity). She had a natural aversion to exactly the sort of event that she’d unsuspectingly become caught up in, and found a quieter position with the stragglers - the more pronounced being a striking black and blue pegasus like her mother, and the same pale-coloured mare which had witnessed the fall of the Living tree (the leaf of whom still glowed beyond her knowledge, behind her ear). As they poured into the north trailing like loose ends behind the Matron and Kisamoa (she knew him as the demon who had summoned the dead by the river), a great fissure opened beneath the rocky spire of a mountain. Eira had never seen The Pinnacle, had never ventured further than the big tree in the West or the beach to the south. The Eastern Flats and the living shadows which cloaked the north were unknown territories, no doubt teeming with creatures more ravenous and deadly than those she had met - perhaps Indra was lost or searching, somewhere therein. Illuminated by the hot-white light emanating from the crevice in the monolith, the Loricatrunc turned to address her followers. The sickly filly paused by the thigh of the familiar white mare (there were others she knew, certainly, but they were concealed within the throng), and listened as the low, pulsing rhythm of music began to grow around them and her nostrils quivered as the pungent hue of so many packed together dissipated as a gentle wind washed by. As her quiet, thoughtful gaze began to wander between the faces and forms of those around her, her chipped hooves slid subconsciously nearer to the pale woman until her shoulder was pressed into the soothing warmth of her thigh. The black and teal feathers by her breast fluttered with excitement, lulled from rest by the proximity of their master and thrilled still further by the brightening atmosphere. "I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter."

- Pablo Neruda, Winter Garden