Mourning

The hillocks, harrows, and fjords were coated in birch and ice, thick pine, fir, and frozen lakes forming bogs and ravines.

The mounds of the dead echoed millennia old names. It was as if, everything was frozen in stasis, down in the belly of Jord.

Finally, we came to a clearing in the glen. The anemic sun parted in the thick dark clouds above, letting in petering light.

Yolanda clenched my hand in the strange, autumnal chill.

"The sunlight feels as if it burns my bones," I whispered in the lowest of tones.

Yola looked as alert as a hawk. She gazed up at the sicksleep molten star, a crucible of power. Her face hairs stood on end, nostrils flaring, and her vibrant blue black locks coiled from wind and moisture.

"Quiet, wife," Yola murmured, pressing her sweet cinnamon finger to my lip, and smoothing ever so delicately my glassy damp blonde hair.

We held each other like ghost wives, wedded to empty tombs. Wombs barren, worm-ridden - Jor