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I popped out of Smoke’s universe.
Smoke had wanted to scream, too. I think he came close to being terrified awake.
One-Eye laughed. “Cold enough, Kid?”
I was soaked. With very cold water. “What the hell?”
“You try staying out there forever again, I’ll freeze your ass for good.”
I began to shake. “Oh, shit, that’s cold.” I did not tell him what I had seen, why I was shaking really. Probably just my imagination ru
“No. Just trying to keep you from getting lost. You won’t look out for yourself.”
“I think I’m lost already, old timer.”
The stars wink down in cold irony.
There is always a way.
The wind whines and howls with bitter breath, through fangs of ice. Lightning snarls and barks upon the plain of glittering stone. Rage is a red, near-animate force, as bloated with compassion as a starving serpent. Few shadows frisk among the stellae. Many have been summoned, there or yon.
At its heart the plain is disfigured by the scars of cataclysm. A jagged lightning bolt of a fissure has ripped across the face of the plain. Nowhere is that fissure so wide that a child could not step across but it seems bottomless. Trailers of mist drift forth. Some bear a hint of color when they emerge.
Cracks mar the surface of the great grey stronghold. A tower has collapsed across the fissure. From the fastness comes a deep great slow beat like that of a grumbling world’heart, disturbing the silence of stone.
The wooden throne has shifted sideways. It has tilted a little. The figure nailed thereon has changed its sprawl. Its face is drawn in agony. Its eyelids flutter as though it is about to awaken.
This is immortality of a sort but the price is paid in silver of pain.
And even time may have a stop.