Sleet plummeted down from the inky sky, great wet rags that smashed into the ice-crusted ground with a small splat. The windscreen wipers of the stagnant bus squeaked, and turned the slosh into a gray smear across the front window. The snake of road lights vanishing into the gray curtain of the downpour and rising mist seemed to cower beneath the displeasure of the elements, soggy halos wavering around the pallid bulbs, impotent to deliver proper illumination into the night.
Swearing beneath her breath, Jutta clambered out of the vehicle's front door, grunting a goodnight to the apathetic driver. When she had reached the winter wonderland outdoors, the door creaked shut without a response. The world spun a little, as she, for a moment, stared uncomprehending at the disappearing arse of the bus.
She awoke to the sensation of cold sleet splattering upon her hair. It also seemed to clarify her thoughts a tad after the unbearable heat of the bus and the fugue of a few too many beers.
Right... She ought to be heading home. This was the correct stop, was it? It was a wee bit hard to tell sometimes during this season, when the black of the night mated with something darker from the very pits of the underworlds and then the bloody rain or whatever went and obscured even the rest of comprehensible detail.
Helvetin saatanan vittu. The slivers of landscape visible thanks to the sallow light leered at her with inaccurateness. The pines past the roadside stood too tall, the skeletal birches swaying behind her appeared too tangled and thickety, or whatever it was that the damn trees did during growth spurts. This was not Örmynkulma, the stop where the main road split into the miserable horse-and-cart rut that lead to her home village. Vittujen kevät. She had either stumbled out too early or too late.
Too many beers...well, what was a woman supposed to do when Rämeremmi sang about the amber mead flowing in the Halls of the Ancestors and the moshpit exploded into a raucous conga? Of course you quaffed and splashed around and...and... And...got your band tee sticky and missed the destination. Well, she would have to dig out her phone and check her position with the GPS. Still, even a couple of extra kilometers traipsed in this weather would prove pestilential. Perhaps she would take the risk of calling some soberer friend, and beg for a ride beneath a deluge of sleepy squawks.
The cold kiss of the sleet indeed refreshed her muddled mind, but her hair was fast becoming soaked. She pulled up her hood, buttoned the long trench coat up to her neck. At least she weren't one of those pissypants tweens that tottered around in minishorts and transparent leggings still when the thermometer hit -20, attempting to show off their tiny tits and nonexistent cleavage and then waking up with the flu come the following morn. Nope; being a fan of Rämeremmi supplied you with thick-soled army boots, cargo pants, and other gear suitable into the frostbitten brutal ever-winter of the blacker than black North. Not that Jutta believed in the tosh about hairy trolls tramping in the woods and tossing unlucky humans into a soup cauldron; the favorite lyrics of Kihokki and Lötjä-Letto. Oh, she wore the hammers and the obligatory jewelry, and it was all a romp when the band glued on some fake elf ears and bristly fur. All the more amusing with a pinch of koskenkorva short-circuiting the grunt-faced neurons of severity in your head, but come on, now...
While Jutta rolled her mental eyes at certain others who actually revered the forest and whatnot whimsical creatures of the myths in a creepy fashion, she trod off into the shelter of a clump of nearby spruces, rummaging around in her rucksack and pockets. Perkeleen perkele...where was her phone? Coins, lint, Visa Electron, her flashlight, a tattered fantasy novel with an addlepated, Disney-ish dragon on the cover, Ipod, a protein bar crumbled into a tube of loosely moving crumbs...hmm...a sandwich growing a distinct beard, make-up...yet no phone. Helvetti. It had to-- No, it was nowhere. She must have lost it sometime during the concert.
All of a sudden, a chill wriggled down her spine, and she was left staring at the desolate landscape: the line of black trees melting together with the void of the sky, the tracks left by the bus filling with alarming rapidity. Jutta huddled alone in the middle of nowhere, lost and without a wherewith to call for help, should something ghastly occur.
No, no, no, no! She had to think, think... Bloody beers, could have done without the last two or three... She cinched the strings of her hood tighter, measuring at the stretch of road ahead and the halos of road lights diving out of sight. Damn mist and damn snow-sleet-whatever idiocy with which the sky had decided to plague her. Think, think! If she judged the behavior of the lights right, a steep downhill awaited ahead. Had the bus ascended a moment before she had hit the stop? Or had her befuddled brain tricked her into believing so? If only she could recall clearer details... Why had she rammed her fist into the button anyhow?
At the same time, a snide side-voice maundered something about a trail of huge, sharp-nailed pawprints a friend of a friend had spotted on a field just past Örmynkulma last winter. Indeed, what might those gloomy thickets conceal? The gelid landscape bathed in silence: No birdsong enlivened the naked birches clawing at the mass of obscured clouds above. Merely the faint hiss of the downpour and the occasional creak of a branch accompanied Jutta's lonesome figure.
Both to maintain warmth and observe at the surroundings, she began striding onwards. Over and over anew, she shrieked at this uninvited guest beneath her cranium to shut up and stick itself up that dumbskull dragon's rectum that so simpered on the cover of that abysmal waste of a good tree weighing down her backpack. With the aid of her flashlight, Jutta attempted to solve the conundrums of the undergrowth. Perhaps a known path somewhere, a boulder, any landmark would have sufficed. The additional illumination served as a minor improvement in the desperate hunt, yet it still was almost as productive as defending oneself against a giant squid with a plastic spoon. In general terms, the roadsides did wallow in vague familiarity, yet the same might have been agreed about several other tracts as well: a few kilometers of indistinguishable pines, an open field somewhere with a farmhouse looming in the horizon, repeat this duo times x, until a weatherworn, lopsided roadsign jutted out of the heather by some tractor trail. Such was the axe-sculpted face of this countryside.
Come to think of it...wherefore did that bus stop exist in the first place? It appeared not to actually lead anywhere, unless some junction indistinguishable in the darkness sat further behind her. Well, the damn municipality neglected this bloody backwoods of a hinterland anyhow. She would not astonish over the possibility of some bureaucrat having plain forgotten that sixty years had passed since the heyday of these bushes, and that the last dilapidated house sheltered only foxes. A sheer miracle that the bus connection had not been eradicated by yet another bankruptcy or cut of profitless services.
There and then, the road widened a smidgen, and a glimmer of metal greeted the hail of her flashlight. The crepuscule of her heart lifted a millimeter, shoving back the nagging fears about wolves. A signpost? Surely not another bus stop, it--
Then, an involuntary smile spread on her sleet-damp face. She knew this place; a sun-bleached board erected by the National Board of Antiquities sometime during the last millennium whispered frayed fragments about a Bronze Age cult site deeper in the woods. An unkempt path guided the random passer-by upon a moss-spattered cliff and to some lichen-clad stone settings from beyond thousands of years, eons incomprehensible to most feeble human beings who spent only a couple of decades upon this earth.
Jutta did not much care about such piles of rocks, apart from acknowledging that they existed and bore some historical importance. Rämeremmi sometimes sung about them, and a giddy neo-fengshui-hippie-pagan-whatever friend had once coaxed her to climb up there and take a glance at the hiidenkiuas. Oh, the friend had bubbled with glee akin to an overboiling cauldron of witches. Hammers and sunwheels clanging at her neck, she had frolicked about the top, ooh'ed and aah'ed and cooed at every pebble and stump, Jutta awaiting with a dishonest smile by a flat block of granite with some indents within. The friend had named it an altar of some ilk. What a stupid notion. Then, a litany of legends had gushed forth, names and purposes that had zoomed out of Jutta's other ear. The single thing that formed a vague recollection was a juvenile tale about some creature called hiisi employing the stone setting as a sauna stove, which it perhaps did resemble in the eyes of bygone ancestors.
Nevertheless, that excursion into the woods affected this troublesome moment: It supplied the lost young woman with some vital facts about how to reach home. A splendid twist of the luck, particularly as the downpour seemed thickening, and not a single car had passed her since departing the bus. She glanced up and down the road, a weariness shading her gaze. Did such a...thick silence always embody these late autumn nights, or should she just blame the location?
Jutta shrugged, swearing at the profuse sleet. Everything became damp and chilly thanks to this heavenly puking contest of the nonexistent gods; the fabric of her hood would soon soak through. The faster she reached some shelter, the better. Well, now. She had stumbled out of the vehicle too early; the road itself meandered on and on akin to a drunken serpent, requiring fifteen or more kilometers suffered in this damn deluge. The forest, on the other hand...the way to the hiidenkiuas had been signposted at least at that one time some two years back. Just beyond the cliff, a ramshackle joggers' track marked with yellow rings painted on the trunks of trees unwound, leading eventually to the outskirts of her village. She knew parts of it adequately, and ought not to become lost if she but maintained alertness and a steady hand with the flashlight.
Right...with those extra beers muddying up her brain... Well... Truth to be told, she did feel far less blotto, the chill and simple fear having shooed away some of the effects. Perhaps she could...and then again, perhaps not. Jutta grimaced at the idea of a pitch-black hyemal woods, the meager shaft of her flashlight providing the only company. Hah, had not she mere minutes agone shivered at the suspicion of hungry fang-maws skulking in the underbrush? A proper light at least reached the road, and...and in half an hour, some of her garments, no matter how protective, would consist of more H2O than cotton fiber.
Biting her lip, she studied in turn at the edge of the woods and the slippery asphalt, the tire tracks but a ghost of a memory beneath white fluff now. No traffic whatsoever in sight; not even that one late-night drunkard with a rusty Lada, imagining that he chased villains with a Batmobile on the highways of an alternate universe NewYork. Fifteen to twenty kilometers in this, while the pines and other vegetative whatsits would at least defend her from the wrath of the elements? She--
Then, without a warning, the road lights died with a faint pop. A starless, horizontless blackness smashed down upon the lone wanderer. Sleet continued to plunge towards the earth in the hazy beam of her flashlight.
For a moment, her mind gaped at the sheer audacity of the fates. Then, with a loud string of curses, she stomped off into the direction of the forest path. A damn power outage! At a moment like this! The world could not contain enough perkeles to describe her vexation. Well, so be it; off into the forest The Little Black Riding Hood tramped, giving the Big Bad Wolf the finger. Perhaps a hundred meters further, she discovered the first wooden pole stamped with a looped square, the common sign used by the National Board of Antiquities to point out historical sites of interest. One long, frustrated breath later, a concoction of mud and soggy pine needles squelched beneath her boots. The hazy outline of a second pole there, peeking out from beyond a stump. A third to her left. Helvetti, she was not some squealy damsel in distress, but an independent young woman of a modern society who could force her way through a gray rock if necessary! Hah!
An indefinite queue of poles further, the terrain began a gentle climb. Jutta's shaft of light revealed roots, rotted mushrooms, and naked stalks: twisted and lumpy shapes among occasional patches of white. The cover of the trees indeed created a minor haven, yet indistinct worries had begun oozing again into the foreground of her consciousness through cracks in the crumbing wall of anger. For one, Jutta was struck swearwordless by the combined density of stillness and dark. Commonly one beheld at least some pinpricks of brightness hereabouts: a star, the far-off headlights of a car beyond a stretch of field, not this...this...primeval void. Then again, the modern man perhaps relied too much on fanciful inventions and--
The flashlight brushed the trunk of a tree, and there, in the middle of the impenetrable blackness, a pair of luminous eyes. Staring at her through a film of haze.
A sudden, icy fist of fear clutching at her throat, Jutta recoiled and screamed. The high, hysteric wail still rang in her ears as she slid to a halt in the slimy humus, overbalanced, and fell on all her fours. She lost her grip on the flashlight, and it rolled away into a bank of foul-smelling green sludge. A few meters ahead, the underbrush exploded into life with snaps and cracks of breaking twigs, accompanied by a loud animal blart. The pair of eyes blinked once, then vanished into the night.
Inhaling ragged gasps, her pulse an insane hammerbeat against her ribs, Jutta stared at the spot where the beast had vanished. Eventually, as her heavy breathing had become the single most discernible sound beneath the bedevilment of the skies, she extended one quivering hand to fetch back the flashlight. Taking support from the trunk of a nearby alder, she hauled herself up, attempting in vain to dispel the disquieting sensation that ice flowed in her veins instead of hot, lively blood.
Helvetin helvetti. A bloody...bloody elk. Or somesuch damn critter; it must have been as terror-struck as her. Those bloody eyes aglow against the utter blackness...just...it...it might have been anything. Fine, fine...she had to get a grip on herself and continue. Not the first time such eyes had roamed into the unglamorous scope of her life, but usually she had lolled safe and warm in the comfort of some car's backseat, observing at the sinister glint through a window glass. Then again, darkness could transform a bloody hare into a thousand-headed monster of myth. This damn sordid night vision evolution had botched up and never bothered to repair afterwards could conjure up the most archaic dreads from the deep bogs of the subconscious, where some remnant of a cave-dweller yet worshiped natural phenomena as deities, and read omens in every puddle and curiously shaped cloud. No, she could not dwell on such moronic matters. Furious at herself for almost wetting her panties due to some undernourished cow spending its entire life munching on berries and crapping, she brushed mud and mildewy leaves off her coat, and resumed the walk.
Still, Jutta could not help her broodings from swinging back to this foolish friend and her creative outlook on life. Well, she could forgive the hunter-gatherer incognizant of electricity and quantum mechanics for nurturing beliefs about nature spirits; they possessed no means of knowing better, after all. Alright, this friend had a kind nature and provided fun company--tonight ascertained that yet again--but how could someone working in a bloody laboratory prove so...naive? Bleh.
While Jutta ruminated on these opinions, time crept onwards. The damp path meandered between rectangular boulders and twisted trees, requiring her to clamber over a number of fallen birches as well. The poles some internshipper or summer worker had hammered into the soil ages agone however persisted, even if moss had invaded most and some had disappeared. On occasion, her boot sunk into a gurgling puddle, and she could have sworn that the bloody snide mire played deliberate tricks with her by seeping around ahead of her and forming the slipperiest conglomerations right beneath her descending sole. Several times now she had questioned the decision to enter the forest: Even sans the roadlights, the asphalt route would have been a straighter option, and would not have harbored an obstacle course of all a manner of rotting objects across the way. Oh, how the wilderness loved and cherished the soft-gutted urban couch potato! Sleet, slime, sludge, what a trinity of fun, squishy things. Hah, if some tittery fake blonde with balloon implants attending one of those lack-witted Survivor shows would have to experience even a quarter of this, they would have run squealing away. Nevertheless, Jutta had trod on for too long to backtrack her steps now.
Should she not have already reached the steeper rise? Times and distances were difficult to judge in a forest darker than a raven in a bricked-up tomb, but nonetheless. She might have spent here hours already, or alternatively a mere score of minutes. Then, there was this...this... Well, it was hard to clarify the exact nature of the feeling. An inexplicable pressure of some kind...as if... But, no, no, a burgeoning hangover or something similar had to excuse it.
One oddity, however, continued bothering her. The temperature was increasing in an unnatural fashion: she had flung back the hood and unbuttoned the trenchcoat a short while ago. The unpleasant dampness of her back and armpits could not be attributed to the effects of exercise alone: something peculiar was befalling to the sleet as well. As far as she could tell by relying on her pitiful flashlight, the unfathomable darkness of the pines was thinning out, exposing her again to the unfathomable darkness of the celestial spheres. Yet, the ground remained just as unfathomably dark here, and as she angled the beam towards the high-jutting branches, the flakes hitting the shaft seemed to...well, dissolve into nothingness ere slumping down to their destined graves. Jutta could not comprehend the nature of such a phenomenon. In all likelihood, some posh meteorologist could have spat out an instant theory about a highly localized effect of Global Warming, but...
Jutta stopped, and frowned at the steepening slope ahead. She could now smell something peculiar as well, something distinct from the flavor of wet pine needles and autumn decay. A whiff of pungent...something, not noxious to the senses akin to the fox carcass farther back in the hollow of a glistening boulder. And...what...what was that...that shimmer? Was she suffering from some afterimages of staring too long into the single beam, or...no, it had to be something else.
She switched the flashlight off, gawked at the gloom ahead. Without a mistake, she had reached the escarpment, and the marked path would wind to the right now, hopping along almost natural steps all the way up to the crest. She recalled this detail well, as it had been more exciting than the all the Bronze Age stone piles summed together. Now, however, she could discern a faint reddish-purple glow pulsating past the lip of the cliff. What...what was that? Had someone built a fire up there? It must have been visible from further off, but the glaring LED lights of her own aid against the perils of darkness had perhaps obscured it.
Then, something else clicked into place. She lifted up one hand, probed at the air, the frown on her face deepening. The baffling heat must have been emerging from the same source as well. But...that...that was impossible. A couple of burning logs could not have produced the heat of a bloody forest fire, and her fingertips were skimming almost some kind of barrier where the temperature skipped up yet another degree or so. What the...
The unsettling sensation of parky claws tightening around her throat returned, draining her mouth of all moisture and quickening her pulse into a frantic gallop. The entire setting made no sense. Regular fire produced no such hues, unless some alien substance became consumed in the flames. On the other hand, that might explain the weird aroma wafting around, but...but...wherefore would any damn hiker or pot burner settle down on such an insane night upon an open cliff top where...where the heat of their kokko would raise the surrounding temperature by tens of degrees and melt the snow? Not to mention the curious pressure, which had become more distinct as well.
It made no sense. Perseet, sense had packed its suitcases and escaped into a different galaxy! A fire could not-- Helvetti. Only one means to unearth the truth. Jutta squared her shoulders, hissed at her heart to halt humppa'ing behind her tits, and clicked the flashlight back on. Chewing on some more curses, she began tackling the slippery upslope. Well, if some pissypants brats smoked something exotic up there, they certainly should share some. Perkele knew she had deserved some hightime after all this adventuring!
The treacherous surface of the rising rock required all her concentration. A few times she slid backwards, as the damp moss squirted off foul liquids and transformed into a green smear beneath her boots. When she finally glanced up from the ground, the top of the escarpment spread out before her, several of the stone settings visible. And...
The second scream of the night erupted from her throat and died on her lips before her ears could register it. No, they were busy listening to a hysterical mantra of mixed internal denial and sheer primal panic. Suddenly, Jutta wanted to run, plunge headlong down the cliffside, simply to shut out this impossible scene widening out before her for forever, yet her feet seemed bolted to the bedrock. Such things did not exist! They were not real! Some dreg of awareness cowered in shame at the sensation of an abrupt, hot wetness spreading down the legs of her trousers, but the forefront of her thoughts remained the battleground of hysteria and incredulity.
One of the larger stone settings near her shimmered with a purplish glow, steam billowing forth from the hot rocks in gentle curls. The wind that had pestered the ice-crusted road somewhere past yon trees shone with its absence. Instead of scowling clouds, stars twinkled down at her from a clear sky, a hint of green aurora fluttering among them. By the cairn, a cyclopean figure regarded her with a wry smile. Even though it sat cross-legged, the level of its eyes stood somewhat above hers, and Jutta was not the slightest of women among her circle of friends. It--he, definitely a he--was naked, and sported proportions more appropriate for a World of Warcraft character: bulky shoulders too wide; massive, bemuscled arms and legs ending in wrists and ankles the thickness of tree trunks; wide, blunt-fingered hands suitable for crushing boulders into powder. A rather hairy torso rose up to meet a striking, handsome face that might have appeared kinder without the leer. Thick, red curls tumbled down his shoulders and spilled upon the moss, a cropped beard sat beneath wide cheekbones and a strong, straight nose. His eyes had neither pupil nor iris, but shifted color with amber hues, as if a wildfire had roiled beyond the sockets. To the other direction...well, he certainly needed his vast hands to grab that hose while marking territory.
While the recital of denial continued to fill her mind, the single tatter of alert awareness screeched at Jutta to lift up her lower jaw from the heather and cease gaping at the privates of mythical creatures. After a moment, however, a sonorous, jovial voice broke the spell.
"Why, surely you did not climb up all this way to evaluate at my manliness? Come, lass, join the bathing. I deem you would enjoy one after your little...fright." He raised one of his prodigious hands, waved at her with a meter-long vihta.
In other circumstances, Jutta might have fainted upon this frank destruction of all rationality. However, something in his genial grin abated the terror in tiny increments, and she eventually found her voice, small and quivering somewhere in the very bottom of her gut.
"W-what are y-you?"
"Why, is this not a hiidenkiuas afore me?" the creature emitted a rumbling belly-laugh. "Surely you can thus fathom that I am the hiisi of this hill, and that this is my kiuas! Ah, how the smallfolk have forgotten their own roots and gathered to worship the magicks of machines! I cannot bear those things; beeping, honking, noisy contraptions, not to mention the irritating itch of your powerlines!" He cocked one bristly, red brow at her. "Come now, I do not meet the lessened kin of Kaleva so oft these days of urbanization any more. Come, wash away that piss and share a tale or two. I am called Untamo Ilmarinpoika Tulikutri; how about you?"
"J-Jutta...R-Romppainen. From Ö...Örmynkulma," she piped back. Heart and mind racing in frenetic circles beneath the shifting flames of his capricious gaze, she dared a tiny, hesitant step onwards, the another. During the third, she awoke to the full blast of the cairn, only to notice how her skin dripped with sweat beneath all the layers of clothing. Exhaustion gnawed at her very essence after multiple shocks and all the physical exertion, and while the box of solutions to the present dilemma yawned with emptiness, she followed the hiisi's suggestion, and tossed off the trenchcoat. Other items followed, soon forming a small, black mound at the roots of a tree, upon the branches of which rather more voluminous garments were arranged to dry. The tales of her friend, those that had seemed ripped straight off from an idiotic children's storybook mere minutes agone, were breaking loose from the barred prison of discarded miscellanies, filling in missing details with the friend's high, effervescent voice, the never-ending enthusiasm of which sometimes annoyed her. Something about electricity...
"You...you shut down the powerlines," she managed dully.
"Ha! Naturally! Now, would you wish to spend all your time scratching at a hideous, unending itch while endeavoring to take pleasure in the delights of the sauna? Your kind ought not to have invaded my realm with their gimmicks and raised their devilish lines next to this hill! Ah, their accursed effects permeate not the thick granite, but out here..." He waved the vihta again. "I have grown too comfortable with my home over the centuries and shall not move unless they bulldoze the forest and those pallid blocks of concrete, such poor imitations of our comely cliffs of graystone, begin to mushroom around. Alas, the fate of many a kinsman of mine, but...I will yet persist."
Still staring at him wide-eyed, Jutta crouched down upon a blanket of moss. Within this bubble of otherworldliness, all surfaces felt dry and pleasant, warm against her bare skin. Without the mass of black band merchandise, she was chubby and pale, the result of spending too many hours immersed in computer games and hogging on hamburgers. However, a couple of rolls soon lost their embarrassment factor next to this giant and his ample stomach.
Beside her, Untamo sighed, and prodded her bare shoulder with a blunt finger. When he spoke again, the subterranean cave-echo of his voice had mildened to a soft rumble.
"Fear not, lass. I will undo the binding spells and release your precious powers of electrons after my bath. I do see your friend Marika sometimes, the one you appear to hold in some contempt. On occasion, she brings me some of her most excellent self-made soap, which, alas, endures not long when washing clean this girth. I hear it saddens her that you so scorn her stories."
Cheeks burning crimson, Jutta stared at the glowing cairn. In spite of small flames licking the stones, the concentric ovals of lichen bearding their surfaces did not so much as smoke. Neither did the clumps of nearby heather nor the low junipers. Akin to the merry star-sprinkled sky, the hot kiuas seemed somehow superimposed upon her reality, semitransparent layers touching one another here and there. The jumble of her beliefs about the facts of existence whimpered on its abrupt deathbed. The creature knew her. Marika, her naïve neopagan friend...with her candles and constant chatter about living in harmony with the deeper spheres of the wilderness...had been right, all along?
Sensing her shame and unease, Untamo prodded her again with a colossal ladle dripping with some pungent, spicy liquid sending fort the exact same odor she had smelled farther down the path. "Now, lass, untense yourself! Drink! I pour this upon the rocks, but 'tis a tasty brew for the lesser kin of Father Kaleva!"
Without so much as a squeak of objection, she slurped some of the beverage straight from the bowl, the object itself too hefty for her to seize. Her mouth curved into a surprised smile as a blissful warmth filled her fear-riddled chest. The hiisi hacked a content chuckle at her reaction, and disposed of the rest into the kiuas. The rocks hissed, releasing steam and the now familiar fragrance, small spirals of purplish vapor soaring towards the heavens. Jutta yelped, as she felt warm water splashing onto her bare back as well. Yet, right beyond her shoulder, she met Untamo's wildfire gaze, an affable grin crinkling the corners of his eyes. A huge, dribbling sponge was thrust into view.
"As I told unto you, lass, relax. 'Tis a fine night for a wash, and mayhap you might enjoy further tales of us otherwights, as your friend might put it. I do reckon she has narrated some of these already, but a recount ne'er harms a lass, hmm?"
For all his bulk and evident strength, the hiisi began a surprisingly gentle scrubbing, on occasion slapping at her back with the outsized vihta. Listening to his sonorous voice, and the whispering of the kiuas stones after yet another ladle of liquid, Jutta watched the newborn beliefs about the fundaments of this existence crying for more mother's milk.
Something in her had died for good when she had stepped upon this cliff tonight, and something else, something now forever undeniable, had emerged instead, born of an encounter she never would have been able to predict. A former life based on cold logic, rationalizations, and common sense...its foundations were evaporating akin to the rags of sleet in the surplus heat of the hiisi's kiuas.
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Help
Bearmione TROUBLEMAKER Grimger, on 04 October 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:
Really enjoying the read, will comment on them once I'm done...
