NOW THE EARTH WON’T HOLD ME / WHILE I WANNA LIVE
Their numbers increase, but they do not swell. This is no army - for Toro may not know war, but he knows military, and this? This is a handful. The hunger for battle sits in his chest like red ember. He wonders if it will be enough.
Solis jabs at Seraphina, their queen, and she jabs back. Others mutter; Solis has them parading off into the whipping white winds and the only thing El Toro can see is the shadow of something large.
Solis is talking, always talking, and then the fog and clouds dissipate and there is the herd: elk of ice and snow, blue antlers of winter glass like swords in stones and Toro wonders, wonders again, if any of them, if all of them, if he will be enough. In silence he has followed the god, but now…now he wonders how to approach these beasts, for once, they tower over him and his flesh and lung ache as the cold shrivels his skin and makes him shiver, muscles spasming and shaking in all the places that hurt the most. He winces, and for once he speaks of strategy, ”Do we actually know how to fight them?” He asks anyone that will answer; this is already looking like a defeat. El Toro does not seek to be bested twice in a row.
The Earth Won’t Hold Me
"What I say,"
What I think,
