L E V I A T H A N S E A : More!

It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift...
the baffled King composing Hallelujah; Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah...
... it's not a cry you can hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light,
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah; Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah...

Newerth was a landscape of colour upon the evening of that third day, the long sweeping tones of purple and rose falling from the horizon as teardrops; the earth wept, its solemnity broken, as Oiolossë picked his way along a mountainpath. The air was thin here, and bereft of much oxygen; his vision, compromised presently by the lack of any real night, swam before him as he gasped for breath. The Dimension, which lay many leagues at his back, whispered to him upon the winds of the South, their rushing path taking them along the same strange, winding way he trod; he paused, a foreleg extended, the knee curled to his breast, and trained his gaze backward, to the way he had come just over his shoulder. The Hollow, growing small in the distance, seemed almost comical in it's majesty, the wide forests spreading to the boundries of the land and then quelling themselves, as though held back, as though trained to remain: thus was he, and with a sudden, blithe infusion to his step he turned back, now moving steadily forward. Oiolossë did not know where it was he was being led; instead, he followed the path of several fixed stars, hanging precariously in the North - - and they, staying low upon the horizon, broadly urged him onward, encouraging the quickening of his pace, the jaunty uplift of his majestic head, the shadows which clung to his rump and dragged him a step back for every three forward. The white stallion broached the foothills of the mountainpeaks just following dawn, the sudden brush hindering his steps as he moved, alone, through the pale pink brightness - - Oiolossë! Child! son! Return to me! the Hollow called to him, and even now, many tens of miles from its outermost borders, was he tempted to turn back, to retrace his recent steps and lead the rest of his life in the silence of the heady palms. Then the wide, ancient eyes of the great Kings found him, though he was not certain how, and he was reminded of the role he was to play: destiny, as it were, was calling the young horse, and he was loathe to refuse reply. Perhaps it were the promise of great riches, the sure and steady knowledge of power, of great worth - - but most likely it was the thrill of the simple unknown, the grasses which had never before known his footfalls, the rivers in which he had never bathed; o! for youth and worth to find themselves within the breast of a single, promising creature! surely this is too much! And Oiolossë, silent and secure in the moment, looked to the East and remembered the slow, cloistered prison of the Dimension; he remembered the snow-capped mountains over which he had climbed; he remembered Skywalker: Mother! o! Mother, never again! But the gold dam would not be found, not so long from the Dimension, and he was left alone again.

Azhrei was not unknown to him; no, Rasalhague had been spoken of by the winds during the long, winding path he had taken - - he knew the land as he had once known the Hollow, filled with beauty and darkness (for nothing is without its' secrets, not even himself). He had seen the stallion from a great distance, not a King surveying his Kingdom but rather a lost, confused warrior trailing the old warpaths - - and Oiolossë's heart warmed to him before they had spoken a word; there he stood, sentry perhaps, atop a knoll overlooking the path Oiolossë had yet to take. Ah! o, King of the Dead! Everlasting-Whiteness! and without ceremony was Oiolossë approached, though he expected none; Azhrei had done all he could, he supposed, approaching steadily as the Warrior took stance in his path -- he seemed to long for what would never again be, Oiolossë supposed. O! Dimension! here I have found another who might have been your son! o! to send him to your bosom for fostering! It was there, within Azhrei: the grace, the beauty, the ancient wisdom which Oiolossë himself possessed - - but the warrior-stallion would never come to know what might have befallen him, had he been borne amongst those wide fields in which Oiolossë was fostered; Oiolossë would never tell him. It would kill him. “I hope the night treats you not unkindly, traveler. For the road looks to have been long.” Legends walk the earth tonight, Oiolossë among them - - though he did not know himself to be fulfilling any prophecy, did not know that Azhrei might have heard of his existence upon the winds, much as he had Azhrei's.

"All roads are long, friend; what matters is the place in which you end your travels. I would not lament my trek were I to find myself firmly ensconsed here." His words were deep and well-intoned, his voice that of a ghost reaching from beyond the Veil of the Worlds - - it was a strange meeting there, in the shadows of what was and what might once have been: Oiolossë and Azhrei, the Prophecy and Excelsior; he did not move much after he had spoken, instead keeping his stance facing the other stallion, his deep, ancient eyes fixed upon those of Azhrei. He did not suppose his gaze to be inappropriate or unsettling, but rather straightforward, as straightforward as he himself was, filled with passion and a thousand years of grace: "I will not ask you where I find myself, for I well know: Rasalhague, the winds bring tell of it to me. And you, they speak of you Azhrei: lover of the Queen, father of her Child - - forgive me if it might seem I know too much: it is as much a blessing as a curse. The gift of a lifetime spent with the Dead in the Ancient Kingdoms." Oiolossë had little to fear from revealing from whence he had come, for none now lived who would challenge the knowledge he bore: no, and instead he contented himself in quiet introspection, his body heaving yet quelled in the still of a Northern eve.