Snowforest Taiga mangosteen

the dreamer's breath came harder now, more for the swift funnel of grief than the swoon of his weaker flesh. they drank one another in, the woman who pled for him alone and set herself up as an altar.

prescient thought took the dreamer down another path, one where she carried away pieces of gold from his own soul, to be reborn beyond his sight.

he reached for the selfish tendrils of who he had been, the man ravenous in appetite; but as he brushed them, he felt too how foreign the sensation had become.

"love kills the dream." and a dream it would be. they would rise in fragments.

dancing fox, elven in a brilliant thought.

"sex kills it too."

he was surprised by his own frankness, surprised moreover by how his body's want began to ebb in the despair of realization that this set of experiences were permanently behind him now.

was he not still a man? 

no longer, Wolf clicked. silence followed. a man would not sacrifice these things to follow my voice.

the dreamer knew he could do nothing but surrender, to lose these last vestiges of self so he could be still in the heart of the very world.

"i believe i called to you. and you've come. but your question isn't one i can answer. it's the dream. it's only ever been the dream, calling through me."

and the dream knew no gods.