Nehemiah was a man. He was of blood and flesh and if One was to grind his bones he would be ash…
Ash. Smoke. Soot. Grime. Cinders at his feet. All he could smell and taste, even when he slept.
And yet he lived. The Burning had eaten his entire land, his wife, his animals. The fields of pure yellow made black.
Visions from a bird’s eye kept his awake so he need not dream of devastation. He had anothers dream in his mind, floating like a cloud, free as an unmoored ship. It made him cry, to feel happiness, he was desperate.
But this vision that now fogged and kept him awake was a point of trouble. The eyebird was wise, found what he was meant to, clever bird, and had brought to him a woman covered in snow, covered in petals, covered in what looked like cotton but felt like silk. He stole his hand back and stared at it, as if he had been scored, and looked down again to this woman in her snowy grave of petals and a frown creased his brow, deeply. He stood a while before bending down, hesitating before touching her. He stared at her eyelids, pink, eyelashes that looked a silvery gray. He found himself entranced.
“She’s beguiling…”
He reached for a petal, to have her hand find his. Still, her eyes were closed, but she moved like she was awake, gripping his hand tightly and bringing the petal upwards, soft, tentative fingers pulling the snow crusted petal away, away.
“Woman you live?”, he muttered, his accent thick.
Her eyes open, two black, engrossing pools, filled with the swarming cloud-panicked blue of the sky above.
“I dream“, she replied, without a smile, though a loveliness lived in her face.
And Nehemiah pulled her from her tomb and took her to the House on the Hill, Tiltt Hill, and like a doll he warmed her by the fire and dressed her and she him, sewing fetishes of bird claw and mouse bones to a leather string and weaving it round and around till it hung a long strap from his neck, a soulchain.
No words were spoken that evening, they sat staring at the flames.
They were alive.
