Someone Else's Kingdom, BOOK II - Scene LXXXVIII

The strange bird soared. Its grace upon the firmament soul-like above the material realm. A petrol-hued kytalyk, rising with life, under the cloudy vault. The gold-blue ceiling of the sky hidden by a murky serpentine silver.

Below water pelted the earth, like large raindrops on delicate butterfly wings. As war, in endless flowers, blossomed across the islands of the world. So many tall poppies and scattered petals. The fish, wild at sea; the animals, spritely on the land. The birds, but this one, absent from the sky.

Everywhere on the wheel below a swirl of swords and blood.

On the eastern half of Brynnyfirdia 10,000 lay slain.

Still thousands more lay slaughtered and dismembered in the wooded mainland north.

In the Eastern Seas, 4,000 men, expired in the water.

And on the Maiden Lands, 20,000 more of every banner, slept in their reddened grave.

Yet still, like marching skeletons, thousands more headed to the ragged pits.

The war and wild weather as bone and flesh-filled cauldrons on the unsteady ground.