Chapter the Last,
The Last Day,
In which a shadow wanes.
I. Only One
The severed hand of the black skeleton whipped the liquid fire and molten rock into a compressed hurricane around the pillar that stood in the center of the underground lake. The tempest swelled, all its pressure forced inward to the eye of the storm, a vice squeezing a beating heart—the column buckled inward from the stress, about to implode, when a sudden sapphire light shot out from behind the gray stones. The pillar bulged, filled with a surging power driving up from a depth with which the lake of fire could not contend, and never could.
******
The Dangler stared down into the top of the hollow mountain and cringed as Jai and Ceder were consumed in the nucleus of the eruption. A screaming jet of cerulean water blasted from the foundations of the great stone pillar, up the brooding furnace, through the eternally-burning stove, and out the top of the Circle of the Sun. The fisherman whipped his head back as the water rocketed past him into the sky with the frying pan and the egg of Syn balanced atop the fountainhead like a ball on a magician’s nose. The Dangler saw a red reptilian head poke out of the broken shell as it passed him on the way up—he immediately cast his line. The hook snagged into the waterspout like it was a giant beanstalk and the fisherman was hoisted up and away.
As the liquid column ascended, the Dangler reeled himself up to the fountainhead, repelling off the pressurized tower of water with light-footed, vertical hurdles. In his race to the frying pan he had no time to consider the parallel fates of the two children or the magician. Already he scarcely remembered their names.
The jet of water burst through the low-lying coastal clouds just as the Dangler reached the top of the spout. He picked up the iron pan. Both halves of the red eggshell were empty. With a deep groan, he turned around.
Slowly beating its wings, learning how to fly for the first time in an epoch, a dragon whelp made of dancing flames rose from the white clouds. The heat from its pumping wings turned the top of the water jet to a haze of steam. The Dangler sank down to his knees in the vaporized column as if mired in quicksand.
The white-hot eyes of Syn stared into the mirror of the fisherman’s face and his waveglass features began to melt like wax. He raised his free hand to his mouth and touched his lips to his fingertips as if blowing a kiss to someone afar, then he plunged the ordained hand into the mist at his side.
Staring back into the eyes of Syn, into the white-hot light, the fisherman was illuminated as he drew from the waterspout a giant crescent scythe of razor-sharp waveglass. Darting through the water that filled the Dangler’s body a single golden fish raced like a wave of light through the arm that held the scythe, into the fingers, holding tight, then back to the shoulder, raising up, into the wrist, snapping forward with a twist of his golden tail so the blade of the wicked waveglass weapon arced through the air and severed the head of Syn from its flickering, gaseous body.
The falling head puffed into sparks that trailed away. The white light faded from the fisherman’s form. He knelt down, planting his fishing pole and the handle of the seven-fin scythe to either side of him while he caught his breath. It had only lasted a moment, but the heat from the small dragon’s gaze had melted a worm-sized hole clean through the Dangler’s forehead. Water leaked out the hole in a thin stream for a brief moment then subsided. He shook his head experimentally, then shrugged.
He felt his back begin to bubble. He looked over his shoulder. The red dragon rose above him with three heads setting the sky ablaze where before there had been only one.
II. Stumps
Astray was halfway down the mountainside when it erupted. The devastating blast threw him into the air but he landed running and dashed toward the sea. Behind him, boiling water mingling with molten lava gushed out of every door and crack in the mountain.
The cub reached the shore and streaked to the upturned wheelbarrow lying next to the water. He dug furiously underneath one side of the abandoned cart until it rolled upright, then he leapt into the iron shell before the lethal tide of liquid fire seeped over the beach. As the water level rose, the wheelbarrow was lifted off the ground and carried away from the coast. Any other craft, any other hull would have melted through on the spot riding those red currents out to sea, but the wheelbarrow was unaffected. Astray stood in the prow of his tiny ship and stared high into the sky at the lights he was chasing.
******
All three heads of Syn roared in unison, torching the fisherman with plumes of fire. The Dangler leapt from his perch atop the sky-high fountain and ripped the curved blade of the translucent scythe through all three necks at once. In the air he unhanded the waveglass weapon and it dissolved into drops of rain; next to him, the three decapitated heads of the dragon gnashed in vain at the fisherman and fizzled into sparks.
The Dangler aligned himself headfirst as he fell, holding his arms ahead in preparation to dive into the sea a hundred tails below, his fishing pole pointed down in front like a diviner’s rod honing in on the exact point he would hit the water. His reflection rushed up to meet him fast enough to send ripples to the surface.
With a screech like a rusty knife on glass, the purple roc flew underneath the Dangler and caught him on its badly burnt back. The fisherman balanced in a crouch, ready for anything, uncertain what purpose had prompted this unexpected ally to pluck him from the sky. The roc adjusted its wingtips ever so slightly—the Dangler recognized an attention to fine detail that he innately understood and respected—and they were suddenly flying upward again.
Syn flexed its wings back like full sails in a headlong wind. Nine furious heads of a hydra writhed like a bag of eels, flashing teeth of white fire and roaring waves of carnelian flame. The hydra flew around the erupting fountain in a wary circle, never turning its back to the jet of water.
The Dangler lowered in his stance between the roc’s wings like a man preparing to jump off a galloping horse. When they were within range of the fountain he cast his hook into the liquid column and leapt off the bird of war’s back.
The roc veered sharply away from Syn but it could not escape the notice of nine pairs of eyes. The hydra exhaled a barrage of fireballs that enveloped the purple bird in a primrose cloud as it careened toward the sea. When the cinders faded away the roc fell lifelessly out of the leftover smoke straight down fifty tails and landed with a crunch of broken bones in the bed of a rusty wheelbarrow sailing out to sea.
The Dangler’s boots touched down on the massive geyser. He unfastened his hook with a snap of his wrist and, before he fell, cast his line around the waterspout in a wide circle. He caught the hook in his free hand and attached it to the reel, securing a giant leash around the liquid column. Finally, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the spray.
The pillar of water crystallized into blue glass at the fisherman’s kiss and shot out the top of the volcano like a spring, sucking up any and all remaining power the well had to bestow. With the fisherman saddled behind the front end of the solidified fountain, holding onto the improvised reins for dear life, the frozen spout banked into a barrel roll. The Dangler whooped in excitement as he was spun around in a spiral. His hat flew off when he went upside-down but he caught it again on his next spin around. When the corkscrewing waveglass leveled out, the crystallized water had unwrapped itself into a flat-backed creature shaped like a titanic stingray with broad, turquoise wings and a barbed tail curled up like a fishing hook.
The Dangler jerked the impromptu leash to one side, steering his flying creation away from the red dragon, over the open sea. Syn bellowed with rage and gave chase, blasting streaks of fire through the sky like harpoons from the deck of a whaling ship; the stingray’s waveglass wings were perforated with cauterized holes everywhere the scarlet spears struck true. Before it ever had a chance to fly the ray was sinking fast. The Dangler checked over his shoulder—Syn had nearly caught up to them.
Thunder tolled ominously across the dark sky. The sea roiled and clashed as the almighty fire of the great dragon heated the surface of the water to a fever pitch.
One of the hydra heads lunged for the fisherman. Without compunction he delved his hand into the newly-created stingray’s back and pulled out a full-moon battleaxe made of waveglass, all as matter-of-factly as drawing a sword from a scabbard. With one heaving chop he sliced off the dragon’s head, knowing full well it would regenerate three more as easily as a spark spreading fire.
The other eight heads, emboldened by the first—and soon joined by its reignited progeny—stretched forward to rip the fisherman to shreds with their hellish teeth. The Dangler flung the melting battleaxe through the necks of three overreaching heads like it was a pinwheel, then he pulled an egregiously oversized, spiked ball and chain out of the stingray’s back, forming each individual link of the frozen chain in a split-second of single-minded focus.
The heads of the hydra surrounded the fisherman in a ring of fire. He swung the spiked ball in a wide circle, plowing through every outstretched neck in sight. The chain burned away after one rotation and he let the rest of the weapon leak away in his hand. Ripping on his fishing pole, he steered the flying leviathan in a tight circle, but the sky was ablaze at all turns, a burning barn cutting off every avenue of escape.
The body of Syn flashed like a bolt of lightning and split apart into three sections, a devil’s trident of scarlet torches, each with nine long necks with nine roaring heads of their own. Forked tails and smoking wings thrashed and beat without mercy. The ring of fire around the fisherman folded, expanded, flexed into a sphere, a globe of enclosed flame, trapping the cerulean ray and its rider in the middle.
The fire began to constrict. The scarlet flames condensed into a sparkling garnet, packing all Syn’s wrath inward to fry the fisherman alive.
Thunder tolled again and with it the clouds tore open and rain fell so thick that the sea and sky were indistinguishable. The torrential downpour glanced off the sphere of Syn’s carmine fire like brittle teeth off a turtle shell.
A green blur with white wings flew down with the water from the stars above, sheathed in a cocoon of driving rain as a meteorite is wreathed in fire. The Oldest Fish in the Sea blasted through the dragon’s diamond armor, the red sphere shattered like a crystal chandelier, but shards of a flame are quick to reunite.
In the brief instant before Syn coalesced, the Dangler spurred his flying steed out to clear skies.
The crystalline shrapnel of the dragon’s broken body evaporated from its condensed form to fill the sky with sheets of gaseous fire. The unholy hydra, raw flame and red light, was completely unharmed but mindlessly, vengefully enraged.
The Dangler dipped his waveglass steed’s reins, allowing the stingray to swoop low and skim over the tumultuous sea. With a side-armed throw the fisherman flung the Oldest Fish in the Sea’s limp body into the water. The river-guardian’s white wings had been burned away to a pair of smoking stumps—the Dangler had barely caught him in time. The not-quite-so-dead fish glanced along the surface of the water like a skipping stone, lifeless.
Breezing low over the waves on his waveglass steed, the fisherman held his chin high as if he could feel his beloved’s fingertips brushing his face in the cold spray of the clashing sea, then he dipped the depleted ray down into the water, cutting through the crests of the storm-ridden surface. The leaking leviathan absorbed every drop of water it came in contact with, refilling the holes in its wings and replenishing what volume had bled away. Reanimated, the Dangler pulled his steed into a steep ascent, ready for another round with immortal Syn.
III. Three More
Astray nudged the fallen roc awake. Its massive body was far too big for the wheelbarrow. Its broad wings hung limply to either side, dipping into the sea. Singed feathers and drops of plum blood fell into the water. A ring of silent, shaggy fins closed in, drawn to the undefended flesh.
The cub pounced on the roc’s chest, forcing it to breathe. Its body shook in a wretched spasm. Astray bit the final petal off his necklace, stuck his head between the roc’s beak, and dropped the petal down its throat. He pulled his head back just before the deadly beak snapped shut. The bird of war gasped and jolted upright as if shocked awake in the middle of a gripping dream.
Balanced precariously on the front lip of the floating cart, Astray looked apprehensively at the circling fins in the water, then he turned up to the roc and roared like a fully grown lion. The great bird pumped its wings, using the surge from the cub’s bellow to gain the height to fly, but the downward thrust it reciprocated as it lifted off drove the bed of the wheelbarrow underwater. The roc coasted away into the east. The iron cart sank.
Wool fish closed in from all quarters, drawn to the bright white cub like moths to the light. Sensing a rare beast and a fine feast, they bared their teeth—row after row as sharp as rusty knives—and swarmed.
******
Syn raised its plethora of heads like the feathers of a peacock’s tail, splayed wide in full brilliance before all the sea. It roared a fountain of flames from every set of jaws, each plume even higher and more grandiose than the cerulean fountain that the fisherman had tamed and transformed only minutes ago.
The Dangler soared in and out among the necks of the dragon, hacking off heads left and right with an ungodly arsenal of waveglass weapons that he summoned into existence with scarcely a moment’s thought. Encouraged by the unrelenting rain and the sight of the moon eclipsing the sun, he created his frozen armaments ever larger and more elaborate: javelins, halberds, broadswords, maces, overflowing war-hammers of solid, translucent, turquoise glass, stronger than stone. He launched them all recklessly through the sky, knowing he was sure to hit any number of writhing necks in every direction. The fisherman bellowed in fury as he fought, knowing he had found the third wishing well too late, knowing he was doomed to another thousand years of sorrow and madness before he could try again.
Every head he cut away grew three more, every tail he hewed off forked anew from the splice, growing twice as sharp. A hundred heads stretched out to meet him; a minute more, three again for each of those. The Dangler’s arms spun like windmills, scooping up one blade after the last. When he saw a gaggle of heads before him all in a row, he hefted a jousting lance as big as a battering ram from the water where the stingray’s backbone would have been. The ray faltered and lost speed like a stallion kicking loose a horseshoe, but the Dangler held the waveglass lance level and drove it splintering and splashing through as many of the hydra’s heads as he could manage before the weapon melted away.
His victory was short-lived, the tide of the battle overwhelmingly against him. He was well above the clouds and Syn had spread its unlimited essence into an ocean of fire above the sea. The Dangler knew he would not be able to dive to safety when his waveglass steed finally melted away—Syn would toast him to a crisp if he fell freely through the air. In futile rage he wrenched an enormous whip out of the water inside the stingray as if he had pulled out the liquid spine of his steed’s tail. The leviathan shrank, having sacrificed so much of its volume for the fisherman’s unceasing assault on Syn; soon its wings were barely large enough for the Dangler to stand astride on. Crouching down like he was surfing on a single piece of driftwood, the fisherman cracked the tail-length, waveglass whip like a fearless lion-tamer, forcing a hundred hungry flames to back away.
A seemingly infinite horde of reptilian heads rose up to circle their prey. The Dangler cracked the whip again, but Syn was no longer startled by the deafening snap. The fisherman flung the remainder of the weapon away with no further recourse. All he could see was an ocean of fire and the heavens up in smoke. A thousand years, his beloved had said. He touched his heart, sensing the end had come at last, and he felt a quiver, though it was not his own. “The eggs!” he cried; his hand was on the satchel, still strung around his neck like an apron. The enchanted eggs were shaking like angry fish. He had forgotten all about them in the midst of the fray!
In a heartbeat he pulled the two blue eggs out of the scrip. He held them high over his head with one hand like a conductor stilling his musicians before the symphony begins. When he brought the eggs crashing down the sapphire shells shattered on the stingray’s frozen skin, but the fisherman thrust the unborn spirits of Syn’s brethren inside his steed.
Instantly the ray’s waveglass wings rippled out and stiffened with new life. The torso ballooned, the tail regenerated. Inside the leviathan’s body the twin spirits of Syn raced after one another in a circle, one pulling, one pushing, forming a single, infinite loop that gushed out pure water like the sun shines light.
The Dangler ripped back on his fishing line, pulling the revitalized stingray into a climb above the clouds. Below him, the ocean of fire rippled inward and gathered into a demon of ten-thousand heads. The Dangler urged the stingray on, leaning into a wide circle, drawing the hydra into a chase. Syn wheeled around in pursuit, chasing the barbed tail of the stingray even as the leviathan flew around behind the great dragon, until it was impossible to say who was hunting whom.
Infused with the pulsing power of a pair of primordial spirits, the waveglass ray grew twice as fast as Syn could spread its wild fire. The Dangler veered his steed left, then right again in a semi-circle, curling back in a vast figure-of-eight. He passed under the hydra at their first intersection, over at the next, pressing for more speed, more power, flying in a blurring circuit, a ray of blue water racing the red dragon, a ray of light.
Just before impact the Dangler jerked back on the reins, causing the stingray to pull up with its wings fanned out like an open palm ready to catch a ball. Without slowing, Syn crashed headlong into the leviathan’s grasp, but the fisherman allowed the perfect amount of leeway in the makeshift leash so that the water absorbed the cataclysmic charge of fire without bursting apart. Obeying a flick of the fisherman’s smallest finger, the colossal stingray closed its wings around the red dragon, curtains drawn at the close of a show.
The fire was snuffed out of the sky with a loud hiss, wet fingers pinching a candle out. Ten-thousand candles. A scarlet light could scant be seen through the layers of waveglass that constricted the hydra. The Dangler wiped a melting bead of waveglass from his brow and took a well-earned deep breath.
And then the moon rolled away from the sun.
IV. To Fall
The sun blazed forth in resplendent glory, as red as a beating heart. The inextinguishable dragon roared in righteous fury from the confines of the stingray’s folded wings. The Dangler urged his steed to hold fast, to squeeze tighter, to compress the monster to glittering ash just as Silver’s diamond mist had destroyed the bone claw hand of Sorid in the Secret Stream, but the unborn brethren of Syn could not contest the power of a demon that had a heart of its own. Yet enclosed, Syn drew on the full power of the sunlight that shone through the waveglass walls of its prison—the core of all fires flared and burned white-hot, gushing out blinding plasma like an overflowing wheelbarrow.
When Syn reared up and broke through the leviathan’s choking hold, the hydra’s three branching bodies and innumerable heads and limbs merged into one all-powerful force of nature. Syn stretched its wings from horizon to horizon. It lashed its forked tail against the surface of the sea like a kettle drum. It stretched its head up to empty space. With talons like red-hot iron the great dragon grabbed the wings of the waveglass stingray and tore them off like a cruel child torturing a butterfly. With soldering jaws it bit the head and tail off the leviathan and flung the rest of the leaking body away.
The torso of the wingless, headless stingray flew through the air, bleeding water out both nearly-pinched-shut ends. The Dangler saw the unborn spirits of Syn gush out of the broken ray’s body and stream away into the sky, flowing from one drop of rain to the next, fading away like a cold breath in the wind.
The Dangler popped to his feet on the falling pillar of frozen water, running in place to keep his balance like he was on a spinning log in the water. He ran so fast the waveglass rolled through the air, a carpet unfurling beneath his feet, but as he took each stork-like stride forward the frozen carpet unrolled in the opposite direction, carrying him backwards. In front of him, the unrolled surface cracked like a frozen lake and fell away.
Above, Syn stared at the open sea and the green lands beyond as if deciding which one to eat first, then it lifted its soulless, white-hot eyes to the sky, perhaps wondering whether it could reach up and eat the moon, when it saw the comet. The great dragon stared with a seething intensity at the shooting star, perceiving the last and only real power that might stand a chance of halting the spread of the fire. Syn reared back to strike a deadly blow.
The Dangler saw the threat to the comet. He reached under his hat and pulled out the pink petal he had taken from Astray an hour past, hooked it to his fishing line, and cast it as high as he could.
******
The wool fish closed in. Astray looked up and saw a pink light in front of his face. It was a petal sinking to the seafloor. He saw no line attached; the line was made of water, invisible in the sea like a shadow in the night. The petal drifted past him, casting the jagged teeth of the flesh-eating scavengers in rosy light before they snapped their jaws shut.
His tail was pierced first, and he was suddenly being reeled away toward the surface. Below him, where the pink petal had just twinkled out of sight, the cub saw the ring of wool fish ramming their snouts into one another, all biting the same suddenly empty space at the same time.
******
The petal at the end of the Dangler’s line soared like a bird, reeling out a tail and more of the slender, liquid line of Silver’s hair. Gusts of hot air whipped the petal back and forth; it shimmered briefly then expanded diagonally and flattened to catch the wind, more a kite than a flower, given the conditions.
The pink petal caught the great dragon’s eye only by the fisherman’s most excellent and finely-honed attention to detail in the adjustments he made to the line of the kite, as though he was back in his lagoon waiting patiently to lure a fish throughout the centuries. And still he ran upon the spinning cylinder of waveglass beneath his feet, only vaguely aware of the fact that the water was nearly run dry and the carpet unrolling underneath him would come to an end as abruptly as the edge of a cliff.
Syn turned its head down from the comet, mesmerized by the glowing kite. Its white-hot heart buzzed like a giant dragonfly inside its chest, ravenous for the seductive, magic flower.
The unrolling waveglass came to its last drop. The Dangler took his last step on the frozen carpet and fell backwards off the edge. His purple cape billowed up and ensconced him like the shell of an egg as he fell a thousand tails to the sea, staring up at the rain, at the pink kite zipping after him, and at the furious red dragon diving straight down in rapid pursuit.
As Syn shot after the falling petal, hypnotized by the glowing lure just out of reach, the great dragon assumed a streamlined form in the sheering wind. Its heat condensed around its white-hot heart, its body crystallized like a red diamond, fire as hard as stone. Jaws without hunger closed around the pink petal.
The sea below the fisherman began to twist. The water spiraled out, a whirlpool in reverse, throwing a circular ripple away from the axis that grew to a tidal wave. In the center of the spiral there appeared first a wooden pole with an arrow on top. Then, as the liquid helix untwisted, a shape like a fin appeared, burnt black, which grew into a huge tower of living coral. Before the arrow on the wooden pole could spin around three times, Coral Wing jutted out of the sea within view of the western coast. The pinnacle of Wingtip Tower speared up in between the falling fisherman and Syn and drove itself deep into the great dragon’s breast. Torrents of plasma erupted from the demon’s goring wound and spilled down the sides of the tower.
The Dangler fell all the way to the sea with a crash that sounded like the water itself shattered to pieces.
******
Pulled to the surface by a line dangling in a well that was a day behind, in a forest that ran in a circle around the river of time, Astray broke into the light of day. Next to him was a large turtle, its shell made of wave-washed and faded stones, mud, and sea-cement. “Gahhhhh,” the turtle yawned, “at last.”
The final ribbon of hazy darkness from the cub’s tail had been reeled away, and with it the last petal from his necklace was returned to the sea, where they all found their way to the stars in the end.
He was pure white, as brilliant as a star himself. He cast no shadow on the gray stones as he sat down in the moss on the turtle’s back and stared up at the sky, waiting for the comet to fall.
“She should be along shortly, my lord,” said the turtle. “Never fear—we’ll catch her. Always do.”
V. Arms of the Sea
Syn violently beat its wings against the sides of Coral Wing, struggling to break free. The living coral shrieked and shrilled as ancient burns turned black all over again at the dragon’s touch.
The sea around the castle turned inward with a will of its own, focused on Wingtip Tower. The water swelled up and rose into huge summits on either side of the narrow castle. The cresting waves smashed into one another, climbing higher until the water achieved a height to rival the beating wings of Syn. The arms of the sea, at last taking shape as the crushing claws of a gargantuan king crab, clamped onto the flaming wings of the dragon and reared back, pulling Syn’s white-hot core deeper onto the sharp pinnacle of the castle. Syn thrashed its tail and whipped its head from side to side, but with its wings immobilized and its heart pierced it could not break free.
Infuriated, the red dragon bellowed freakish, insatiable bloodlust. Then it saw a light as bright as its own heart floating on the back of a turtle far below. Syn grew still, staring at the white light. It slowly opened its jaws, silently stretched its neck down to the surface of the sea, spread its teeth, an endless inferno of white-hot lances all poised to center on the undefended white light, ready to kill, hungry to kill, no longer mindless but thirsty to kill, to close its teeth around the white light.
The comet fell from the sky and blew through the back of the demon’s head like a cannonball filled with rainbow-colored fireworks. The blaring explosion rocked the sea from coast to coast and filled the air with ash as thick as rising yeast.
Through the smoking jaws of the decimated dragon fell a delicate flower with soft petals of all colors. Never a comet at all, only a flower carried up one night and lowered down three days later by the gentle wings of the wind. She landed softly in the moss on the turtle’s back.
Lion nestled his nose against Lilly. She received the kiss with a glow. No sooner than that but they fell asleep.
“Consider your wish granted,” said the stone turtle, giving the stray cub a fond look. “See you when you wake up.”
******
Jai and Ceder fled through the dark. They passed through an obliterated doorway, down a steep, lightless shaft, then through a series of endless tunnels. Jai led the way. He had haunted these subterranean corridors in a former life and would never forget the design of their twists and turns.
The mountain quaked and the walls crumbled in and collapsed, but the inseparable pair continued to navigate the stifling labyrinth with unparalleled speed and surety. They raced through a gaping cavern filled with eddies of liquid fire and molten char, then through a long, dark channel, and finally out to open water.
The sky was thick with rain. A small sea of apples floated in the floodwater like flotsam from a sunken ship—an orchard had lined this side of the summit less than an hour ago. The trees were all underwater now.
As Jai and Ceder surveyed the extent of the cataclysmic destruction, the Riverlilly popped up to the surface next to them, expelled from the maze of tunnels by the same force that shook the mountain to its core. They gave the boat a push toward an old friend in need, then dove to deeper waters to begin the last leg of their journey home.
******
Adrift in the turbulent sea, the Dangler’s head knocked against a piece of wood. He looked up, half-conscious, and saw the boat. He pulled himself aboard with his last drop of energy and collapsed in the bottom with his fishing pole clutched in his hands, a talisman to ward off any further reincarnations of unholy fire.
He saw a woman’s face above him in the stormy sky. She seemed to be weeping, but she was difficult to see in the rain. The fisherman waved goodbye to her without a word—the heat of Syn had melted his mouth shut and turned his lips down in an exaggerated frown. Streaks of melted, now-cooled glass lined his face, a mask of frozen tears. He waved to the woman in the rain, and then he fell asleep. The flames of Syn had dried him out. He would not wake up for days, not until he was refilled with that which gave him life, one kiss of the rain at a time, drop by drop upon his forehead.
******