“She wore nothing save the wind. Her hair was silken tar, flowing about her body like ribbons on a moonsless tide. Her skin was pale as the stars in a yesterday sky, her beauty born of spiders’ songs and the dreams of hungry wolves. My heart hurt to see her—that fearful kind of hurt you couldn’t hope to bear, save for the emptiness it would leave if you put it behind you. And she looked at me, out beyond the window glass, and her eyes were black gravity.
Astrid?
