fantasy-prelude

Carting along the river at night it was cold and breathy, he dragged over gates and held on traipsing his toe-caps through dewy white kex-fields of reed and hemlock, butted on hidden slabs and went in among the alders. It did not seem that anything was wrong. Bowling along the alders hand to hand the meadow came to a neck and the bank steepened.

Then he was warm enough to stop. Beneath was the full moon, swimming through the ripples as it meant to for several hours and he suddenly felt terrified at the loneliness and breathed it under the branches like a wrong, winking eye.

        Baby lies so deep in frost
            that any touch 'ld grieve her.
        No more we leave this clouded coast
            than we won't never leave her.