Meadowlark Prairie waiting on the planet to turn to me, dark side

it was colder here, colder than the balmy bays qiao had just fled from. even then, this cold compared little to the place qiao had been born; where whole lives rose and fell among frostbit chunks of meat and mountain, where fields lay fallow for years and the sun swirled beyond a cold and unknowable horizon for hours beyond imaginable time. 

she closed her eyes and listened under an ancient oak, whose sighing leaves stirred and hissed in the tongue of the old world. a brogue qiao had learned to pull from the dark earth, unearthing it like a fat and squirming grub to be pried between knifing teeth and thick, swollen tongues. 

she was spent from days of running. the oak she rested under was the last sentinel of the forest before it petered out into winterbleached plains. in the morning she and her sisters would continue heading northwest; for now, qiao recovered.