Snuff your torches. If she sees the flame, she’ll call the storm—and you’ll never see each other again.
When the lead goes still and the birds stop calling, she is already under the ice.
The wind goes quiet when she decides to move. Then the earth remembers it has bones.
“Light remembers—give it clean edges, and even winter will shine.”
“Salt is memory. Smoke is patience. Together they carry summer through the white months.”
“Warmth is infrastructure—treat it like a streetlamp, not a luxury.”
“Winter tests the seams—of coats, of hearts. I mend both with patience.”
“Cold kills the careless—my seams don’t.”
His oath smells of cedar and snow; his rage, of copper and storm.
Where dawn gilds the ice, a queen of talon and beak keeps court.
A mountain’s shadow unhooks from the peak and takes the wind with it. Then the night screams.
The mountain keeps its dead—and its secrets—in Gralk’s white hands.