sleep... forget... and be at peace...
The storm-voice seeps its hypnotic words into my ears. Beneath its snow-blanket I feel - nothing. My fingers and toes, feet, hands are lost to me. I am a disembodied dream, a flickering thought in a forgotten fleshy shell.
My sister comes into my room, her pretty face wreathed in concern as she looks down at me, smothered in my bedclothes. She pulls at them, attempting to untangle me, before trying to take my wrists in her hands to pull me upright. But her hands slip through mine, I am dream-stuff, as thin as gossamer. She bites her pink lip worriedly, then lifts her head and looks to the window. My gaze follows hers easily, as though I float in the room, and I look out...
The orange groves are heavy with blossom, though their scent is lost to me. Full of white blooms, covering the trees like snow. The warm breeze plucks at them, whirling some into the air and letting them drift to earth like flakes. I watch the display with disinterest, my attention seeping from me as the warmth of my true body seeps into the true snow. But the blossoms fall... fall and fall like snow, are as snow... are snow.
The orange trees stretch and darken to become snow-laden pines. The snow falls light, and between the trunks I see a man walking easily out of the last scattering of trees, a string of furry white bodies cast over his shoulder. Enough meat for many days. Over his head curves a well made bow, beautiful in its simplicity, jostling for space with a large neat bundle of wood.
I know every movement. I know every breath. I know his scars under my fingers and the frayed edge of his hood. I know the valley he walks in.
Three days for a hunt. The thought trickles through the vestiges of my conciousness. A day south through the ice wall, a day to hunt, a day to return. Three days.
The simplicity of the truth runs through me, but my body lies as lumpen and leaded as a corpse. Not abandoned. Not betrayed. The malevolent voice of the storm gone, I see... I know... if there was any betrayal, it was mine, to believe he would abandon me to a slow death; cruel, alone and fearful. A tiny spark of bitter humour left in me ... if he kills, he knows the value of human life. He would kill me under his own hands, take the burden of my death onto himself.... he would give me that grace.
But my freedom from the storm's lies is too late. My heart flickers with a determined life, but for how much longer? The vision of him, now warming me with its certainty is not enough to thaw my body. I hold to what I see of him, like a mariner to the Pole Star, my spirit sets its course, I will not be afraid as I slip towards the dark.
Senses fail, there is no light or dark registered in my eyes. No touch. Hearing dims so that even my thin whisping breath is lost to me. My conciousness slips from the vision, over the snows... and I see... I see...
The storm, descends upon him as he comes out of the ice wall, returning to me. As though an ambush, waiting for its prey, it falls howling upon him. He stands, takes the full force of it blasting against him, his shoulders and back bowing like an oak, bending but unbroken. The fierceness of the blizzard begins immediately to coat him in a white layer as he makes one deliberate step after another, pushing head bowed into the wind and ice, seeking a place for shelter...
The danger screams at me, the unnatural storm... the purpose and intent behind it. I must wake up, must go, must find him...
But the storm has achieved its purpose on me, a woman of the sun. I cannot gather my spirit to my body, cannot awake, cannot arise.
