Spring may have arrived, but at night the water beneath the falls clung to winter's chill as if it were its own heart trying to escape its breast, and Luthe, in turn, stood knee-deep in its cold, biting grip like a dark, seeping wound on its translucent flesh. The icy ache in his bones was an old, familiar friend; a reminder of times gone by, when he had wandered vast, frozen forests crowned by jagged mountain spires, and the bitter winters had always made seeing the coming spring an uncertainty. That place had always been grey and white- snow-covered birch trees and rocky river shores, and cold, unwelcoming faces that lit little possessive flames of delight in his red heart. Looking out across the blossoming daubs of bright spring spreading like spattering paint as far as his dark eyes could see, he felt a strange nostalgia for that bleak, unfriendly, lonely place.
Even at night, in the dim, cold light of a swollen white moon, this place was colourful. It felt somehow indecisive to Luthe, all of this halfhearted young life sprouting up in patches. There was a cruel, quiet, assured beauty to winter in the mountains that seduced him in a way no peaceful spring night could. He savoured the numbing ice spreading up his joints from the water, where the long twines of his tail spread like oil and coiled around his legs like a bed of black snakes. He drank in the dull roar of the falls beyond the bend, and enjoyed how it drained the colour from the songs of the nightbirds and chirping insects with a muffled, all-encompassing white-noise. The silver gleam trimming the trees and grasses in the moonlight and making his dark eyes shine was a comfort.
Perhaps he would not go mad in this place, after all.
to stare upon the ash of all i burned
