Second Life

In his second life, he had been the wretch of Hyuri. How dire those days before the last day!

He could not clearly educe all the places and things he had seen; their details were obscured by a muslin of woe. He knew that there had been an inimitable organic density to the world; a depth of visibility inconceivable to the children of the cærs.

Now... now-since, all that remained of the planet's surface was a caliginous barren.

Compulsively, he had already begun to walk. He stopped. Where to seek Cær Droi? Whatever muscle in him that sensed cardinal direction was long flaccid. Away to his left was a dull copper twinkle. He had used that to navigate the sandveldt, once. He figured his cosine on the invisible spiral centering on that point of light. As he walked he thought:

So the Elesarp still burns.