the centuries fade below my feet

For @Lucius, set near the base of Silvertip. :)

He returned the mountain, though for what Mordecai had no idea. He didn't know what he expected to find there, whether it was the loa that Lecter had so fondly spoken of, or the ghosts that he did not believe in. It had been where his careless, thoughtless steps had taken him that evening. Where the mountain was nothing more than a majestic marker from the highest point of the Spine, he still knew the pathways and trails of its changing, elevated terrain by heart. Beneath it, twilight scarcely mattered. Darkness had coated itself over the finer points in that shadow, and above it he could see the constellations and entities of the world above.

It was the stars above him that had eventually drawn him upwards, finding an open break in the mottled, thinning canopy in which to view them. While the mountain still loomed over him, Mordecai chose not to look at it and left his back to it. Even through the last few rays of the setting sun, the darkening sky held the brightest of stars. Their shapes and sizes ranged from large to small, just as their colors varied. He knew nothing that some of those stars were in fact planets, and it was perhaps safe to say in his current state he could not have cared. Try as he might, Mordecai found it difficult to recall the stories of those constellations that his father had told him, and found his thoughts returning rapidly to that of the Spine and its inhabitants.

agalloch — as embers dress the sky