Phantom Hollow my fingers are numb around your warm pulsing throat

as he bent down to sup from the icy stills, a pale figure emerged across the frozen slab. it was white, limping, and adolescent: iliksis drank of his features the way he might have taken droughts from the river -- hungrily, thirstily, ravenously.

he lifted himself from the gurgling depths and took a step towards the embankment where the frozen ice splintered and thick knobs of past fractures laced like scars over the frozen landscape. there was a fissure, slightly weakened -- iliksis considered for a moment pressing upon it and seeing the boy swallowed by the rapid shearwater.

he only considered for a moment before he plunged upon the braided slits the way a coyote would dive through snow -- an arched leap, a tall dive, two front limbs piledriven into ice.