First, there was light. And next, a darkness.
Frost fumbled. A wind swerved from behind, parting the ridge of fur along his spine. Two thin claws played on his face; he felt a breath of something cold that grew warmer. He blinked and saw yellow; he blinked and saw a waiting maw.
He saw a faltering bulb of sun far ahead—far down. Always further below. It danced beautifully, it called for him. He followed with a worm in his heart. A bite from the apple; his fate, this was, and he saw it even now.
And he saw Ravine, and he saw Spire, and he saw the Kingfisher. They were half-asleep in a dreaming world, tended to by their ever-patient, ever-attentive god of corruption deep below in an impossibly wide black cavern.
Determined to find them, Frost ran steadily through the soil and stones, gathering grit in the pads of his feet.
"Stop," a voice said suddenly in the darkness. The word made the silence sour; it fell far too heavily on the ears. This was a place the civilized tongue never should have reached; it was wrong. The liberty of language buckled and broke here; the cramped walls cupped their hands together and whistled sweet nothingness through the gaps. Any noise else, from any entity else, was a diversion from the mother and its glinting scales, from its body that swung like wooden sidewinders in children's gift shops, an erratic movement unconsciously pulling at devotion and nostalgia.
With these thoughts in his head, Frost stopped.
He waited—waited—but nothing more was said. He felt no unspoken things hanging about in the dim air; there was no hot breath on his neck from salivating pink jaws; no malice dripping from the clay-cool bodies of the rocks. Frost felt nothing, and went on.
He came to a cavern, suddenly.
YOU ARE READING
Aeolia
General FictionA woman runs from everything. A songbird joins her from nowhere, singing colors and images. A whisperer finds the pair among a field of poplars and graves. A dark and vicious viper stalks them from deep in the earth. They must flee from the Viper...
