were much weaker here.
Niko’s star-shaped meadow, once ever-green and pastoral, the very essence of
spirit peace, was frostbitten, brown, and gray and riddled with ice like arrows.
Where trees had spread rustling leaves, their boughs now held shards of flesh
and writhing things resembling tiny men who cried like kittens being drowned.
And the stream which was his life’s ebb and flow ran with swirls of red and blue
and pink and gold: blood shed and to be shed; magic winding it round and chasing
it; Niko’s faith and the love of gods bringing up behind.
Tasfalen was cajoling: “Come, my love. My beauteous one. We’ll feast.” He
flicked a glance to the trees hung with anguished, living things. “The boughs
are ripe for picking, the fruit is sweet.”
And she knew the only salvation here, for her, was in the stream.
She didn’t know the consequence if she should do what her wisdom told her: take
a drink.
Before she could lose her nerve or be mesmerized, she whirled about and flung
herself knee deep in running water.
And bent. And drank.
And saw Niko, when she raised her dripping lips, sitting on the stream’s far
side, his face calm, unravaged. His quick, canny smile came and went and she
noticed he wore his panoply: the enameled cuirass, sword and dirk forged by the
en-telechy of dreams.
“It’s a dream, then?” she said, feeling the icy water with its four distinct and
different tastes run down her chin and hearing a lumbering behind her much
louder, and a rasping breath much deeper, than Tasfalen’s form could make.