Snowflake Obsidian
an excerpt

**Thank you, Clearwater.** Snowflake managed to put those words together. **They all. The Circle...**

**If any did not join in the Circle, they may have lived. If any were shielded well enough, they may have lived. Do not count the dead till you have seen their spirits pass, till you hear their hooves on the shadow plain. We will make a path for his return, for one of them to return, you and I, when it is season. Even the ageless know the shadow plain, even the ageless know the Journey’s End, and return. It is my view, mine only, but it was also your Master’s, that we do not always return in the same way. Love all that lives, that is born from this day, for any might be the one you loved.**

**Aye.** Snowflake agreed in theory, he’d heard that from Hadrianus often enough. Lead wrapped itself around his heart under the ice that he’d laid over his grief. Her words were comforting, but it was comfort like a single blade of grass if he’d starved for a week in a desert, a taste of comfort, a memory of relief rather than the thing itself.