before the morning comes around

Aamu

A snowstorm blew inside a wolf's eyes
And the frozen tears covered all the mountainsides

They are much too thin: starved flesh and bone held together by hope. He can feel it through their gown, the slender waist, the ribs, in the sharpness of the shoulder against which his head rests. Feather-light, starved on tradition and nourished by faith. It is like holding silk and swords in his arms.

Hair brushes by his face and Aamu raises his head, moon-blind eyes peering in the direction of their soft voice. How they can sound both so direct and so sweet baffles him, but on a night like this it seems best not to question. "I am Aamu," he says, gentle, wondering what has them so ardently devoted to a goddess they have never met. What stories were they told, what dreams did they have?

(He misses feeling warmth: warm skin, warm blood, the warmth of the horse beneath him. He wants to rest in the sun and soak up the heat of their body.)

"She is..." I have not spoken to her in three hundred years. "Remarkable." All you need.

The words to describe her doesn't fit within his mouth. They're all somehow slightly the wrong shape. "To borrow the words of another Ascended I asked that question: wonderful. Analytical but compassionate, logical without being cold." His false breath stirs their hair as he pauses. Thinks. Takes the plunge, anyway; asks gently from between his sharp teeth. "How come you are so devoted to her?" You, who are not Ascended yet. You, who have been raised among the followers of the Old Gods. What made you fall in love with the enemy?

But then the time got by and the wolf died
And someday that wolf would be I