smell the warming rise of the sun. They gathered, making their way through the shadows to sit and sprawl in the mist-grass around the cavern of the sirine. A few wandered to its edge and stared curiously at the blue glow upon the glistening rocks inside. Sleepless and tireless, it was long before they settled, troubled by thoughts that were new to. them, an awareness that was both a comfort and a curse. Regret and pity and hate tugged at their minds, emotions at odds with the nrimal urores that milsed in their hearts.*
More than the mere wolves they’d been ages ago when a single pack had stumbled upon the slumbering sirine, they wondered at the new sense of fear they felt for the dreaming lady. Some paced restlessly, flexing their claws and baring fangs at each imagined enemy among the stone forest. They watched the spires, listened for the slightest noise, alert for any sign of the men that had come and stolen what had been theirs since, what they understood to be, the beginning of time.
At length they calmed, and as one they stared off beyond the spires, a low humming forming in their throats as the lady’s true dream returned to them and them alone. Though they rested upon grass and dirt and were surrounded by towers of sparkling stone, the longing, endless song of the sirine carried them back to the shores and depths of another world and another time.
Their shining eyes glazed over and glowed fiercely as the song rose and fell like crashing waves. It sang in their blood and matched the bestial chant that droned throughout the forest of crystals.
White birds danced on the air in the sirine’s dream, diving through warm winds and landing on soft sand. Distant wooden vessels of men grasped the wind in white sails, casting nets into the sea. Vast dark waters sparkled beneath a starlit sky as blue-black waves flashed and rolled restless to the shore.
