The pain was there, clinging above his shoulders, where nothing stood, nothing rose but the terribly heavy void. Around him lay the scattered feathers of a snowy owl, mummified by the biting cold of the plain. How could such a creature have succumbed to the very season that was its own?

Between his clumsy fingers, the man in white (Arthur) gathered the bird’s feathers, drawing them close to himself. Drawing everything he could in toward his body: his limbs carefully tucked beneath him for warmth, his tail pulled against his thighs, his head nestled against his own flank.

There was only him now, alone with himself. With that solitude, the heavy absence that loomed above his head like a sword of Damocles.
His body remained strong; his mind lay shattered into a thousand fragments, as fragile as spring ice, ready to give way and swallow him whole.

But he still had the feathers, into which he buried his face, contemplating with quiet admiration the care with which the Creator had fashioned them, each one so perfectly wrought.