Dream days - dream nights. The moon in the dark runs red with blood. The sun a swollen eye that hangs in the heavens, unlovely and malevolent.
The stone wild in my blood. Through the seamless day-nights - three wakings for others - but for me one night. Burning and storm tossed, lying in my own sweat for all that my Poppinjay cools and soothes. I feel his hands, cold, descend upon me - a moment - before the black-blooded waters sweep me away once more. Blood comes again, and falls like rain, and flowers at my feet.
Rage and war, unceasing and undirected. An orgy of desires, the base heart of Men - rend and tear, strive, win, dominate, oppress, triumph ...
Master.
The stone and I sweat-slicked combatants ... its runes hammer behind my eyes.
The stone screams.. or I scream... or those that we are slaughtering, the wasted by-products of our hideous dance, scream. We cry out as one, as neither masters the other, stone-will and I, forcing ourselves into unity. The scream pierces our union, as shrill and angry as a maiden taken before her time.
My eyes open fully at the scream. The eye-bright hawk above me screams again.
