The dead are not afforded dreams.
Our nights are still, our thoughts unmoored,

and yet I ran the Mhojave with the screm
until my mind dissolved to haze.

There, impossibly, I found you.

My brother ran beside us, laughing-
his footsteps still warm upon the dust,
though both of us know
he has long since vanished beyond my reach.

We gave chase without purpose,
swift as hunger, wild as memory,
our feet drumming old songs into the earth.

Then you fled.

Not in fear -never that-
but with the grin of worthy quarry,
inviting pursuit as only an equal can.

When at last I bore you to the ground,
there was no triumph,
only reverence.

I opened you with tooth and claw,
and consumed you
as one honors an enemy beyond compare.

I woke with neither blood nor breath upon my lips,
only the strange certainty
that this, too, was love.

Not gentle.
Not spoken.
But given completely.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 23rd of Sapiarch, in the year 20 AC.