In the end, we played at speech, words tumbling like the sea, foretelling storms and heaven cracked open. Some things we cannot make as new, we cannot mend. The older gods are dead-- none left to patch the chasms, or stop the sun along its downward slide; none to straddle worlds or shoulder skies. We have no incantations, no offerings against decline. We break us like ice; this chilly, jagged silence is our mortal end. New-fledged, I’ll rise to fly the shattered circle, find a new way, deep and wide, leaving you to build alone. You nest in leaves and break twigs for shelter. You shut out the sky with green things. You shut out the sky.