The Fifth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Five

Steam curled through the air carrying the scent of mint to the far corners of the room.  The cats sniffed and avoided the ribbons of steam.  The elves smiled happily.  The kitsune pricked his ears.  The black dragon settled before the fireplace a stone mug in his right paw full of boiling mint tea.  It was a black mug carved with runes around the rim with a handle that twisted and turned like a honeysuckle seeking chaos.  The mug had a sheen as if it was carved of obsidian and the kitsune with his sharp eyes had trouble telling where the mug began and the dragon’s shining talons ended as they curved through the handle.  The steam rose before the dragon’s luminous silver eyes and they glittered queerly in the refracted light.  Pouring a long stream of tea down his throat the dragon began.  “For a while the Ice Basilisk sought Planes with more obscurity.  Planes where steam or smoke or darkness would hide him.  He even visited the Plane of Curtains.”  The dragon chuckled darkly.  “Adventures he would not forget.  Curtains conceal and reveal making them a two edged sword and he often left ice statues in unassuming nooks waiting to surprise other travelers.  He tried a blindfold but that, ended badly, his curse was very strong.”  The dragon poured another scorching stream of tea down his throat.  “There was one he met that burned bright in his mind, and for all we know she burns there still.  They met in the Plane of Steam and Stone.”

The Plane of Steam and Stone

Air as thick as honey

Or wispy as cirrus clouds

Draped with steam

Mystery’s shroud,

Rising from the stone

The water burbling hot

Sent by the red of the depths

Molten, churning, rock,

Scapes are fashioned of stone

Plains, spires, mountains, vales

Gardens of bright gems

Where dust is doomed to fail,

Mineral by mineral

Crystal flowers grow

Coated with perpetual drops

Down their stems to flow,

Vents rend the earth

Heat arises lifting high

The curtains of steam billowing

Far into the sky.

Here the Ice Basilisk wandered

A ghost within the mist

Perpetually gleaming with condensation

Perpetually stricken by grief and whist,

Here the phoenix Lyra

Hurled heartbreak and fire

In a land that absorbed it undaunted

She unleashed her ire,

Across the Planes across the Realms

By water, fire, air, and earth

She had known so many beings

But of true friends found a dearth,

Betrayed for beauty, betrayed for flame

So many she had unwittingly outshone

She raged at deceit and fear

She traveled the worlds alone,

Here a curtain of steam arose

Concealing fire from ice

Lending each what they thought they wanted

What each thought would suffice,

Around a mountain each did travel

Unknowingly headed for a windswept peak

Clear of steam the barren stone

That which neither dared to seek,

Staring morosely at his steps

The Ice Basilisk rounded the final stone

His gaze found talons upon the peak

Talons and feathers that golden shone,

Not a curl of steam between them

The Ice Basilisk turned to flee

A musical voice cried “Wait!”

His heart beat violently,

How he longed to turn

To speak with one whose voice

Was unsullied by fear or scorn

But fear was his captor and he made his choice,

Before the phoenix’s astonished eyes

He disappeared from sight

His gleaming tail whipped around the corner

As if to hide its light.

The steam arose around the mountain

The wind stilled giving way

Concealment returned

Baffling, soothing, hearts’ that frayed.

The black dragon upturned his mug over his snout draining it: condensation glistened on his scales.  “So went the first meeting between the Ice Basilisk and the phoenix Lyra.  Forlorn he fled leaving her unfrozen but baffled.  For what manner of creature would flee her?  Phoenixes usually enraptured people rather than inspiring retreat and it seemed the strange lizard hadn’t even looked beyond her feet.  Intrigued she endeavored to follow him but the veils of steam shifted and churned and stone rose all around.  By the time they had both left the Plane of Steam and Stone they had only caught glimpses of each other, and every time the Ice Basilisk saw a glint of gold he ran.  His white form blended with the steam, camouflage in a habitat strange, it kept him one step ahead of the phoenix, and the steam kept his gaze from hers.  They departed the Plane separately without ever seeing eye to eye.  It was their first meeting, but not their last.”  Wrapping both forepaws about his mug he nodded regally to his audience and they burst into applause.  But why?  The kitsune thought.  Couldn’t they talk without looking?  And why couldn’t the basilisk blindfold himself, did it just fall off, or did the curse take a twist when he did?  A twist for the worse.

The Fourth Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Four

Smoke snaked about the room from the incense on the fireplace mantle.  Its presence wrapped around the audience as they gathered for the final entertainment of another winter night.  It lulled them down from the excitement of the phoenix’s dance earlier in the evening and hung from the air as if curtains shrouded the atmosphere.  The kitsune sniffed where the smoke lay low along a bookshelf and promptly sneezed trying to unstick a dust bunny from his nose.  Looking down upon the black dragon he saw a mirror had been placed on the mantle between the incense burners.  In the mirror he saw the smoke that wound through the room, but only the smoke against a silvery backdrop as if there was nothing else to reflect at all, no people, no chairs, no books, no big, black, scaly dragon, just smoke.  The dragon lifted his head and for a moment, black scales glinted in the smoke as if reflected by a thousand mirrors, the kitsune blinked and the mirror was reflecting naught but smoke once more.  The dragon spoke.  “The ice basilisk took to seeking out the more obscure Planes, determined to make the best of his situation by creating comprehensive documentation of some of the more eclectic regions of the universe.  He visited the Planes of Purple Polka-dots, Rice and Steam, Lost Socks, Forgotten Forts,” his audience snickered and his voice softened, “and the Planes of Shadows Between Stars, Drafts, Moonlight and Starsong and so many more.  It was after years of traveling, a month here, a month there, sleepless weeks when it all got to be too much until he snapped and moved on, that he stumbled onto a Plane he hadn’t intended to visit.  He was fleeing a forest fire in one of the realms when he stumbled into a pond, but not before he saw his reflection in glaring perfection, and then fell through the pond and into, the Plane of Smoke and Mirrors.”

The Plane of Smoke and Mirrors

Tricks and traps and illusions

Bogglement and delusions

Twisted by the endless reflections and vapors

In the Plane of Smoke and Mirrors.

Magicians have sought it

Time after time

Creating grand rituals

On stage or behind,

Some of them made it

Into the Plane

Some of them found greatness

But more went insane,

There is magic and moonlight

Whose reflection never pales

There are secrets to tricks

That create death for those that fail.

Reflections are endless

Extending into infinity

Mirrors grow at angles

Bizarre products of silvered trees,

Catching part of the world

Casting it to another

A labyrinth to trace

Madness is its mother.

Smoke clouds the mind

Smoke clouds the vision

Curtains that fill the air

Creator of melding and division,

Mirrors are the ground

Mirrors are the sky

Fragmented or whole

They grow and they die,

They catch you

Not just your image

Your power and your soul

Your anguish and your rage,

They surround you with yourself

To infinity they cast you

Broken and shattered

Heartlessly whole too,

There is nowhere to escape

There is nowhere to hide

Not from your own self

As the smoke twists your mind.

The Ice Basilisk appeared here

Crouched on a circular mirror

His white scales faced him

Ice, his first love and worst fear,

Almost through the ubiquitous smoke

His vision twisted seeing strange

Shimmering wings not here not there

With every blink they changed,

He closed his eyes but not for long

The smoke irked and teased

It would not let him blind himself

His tears stolen by the breeze,

He saw himself

Himself alone

The Ice Basilisk

As he was known,

Reflected in his wintery scales

Statues appeared cold and white

Every soul he had frozen

In his tormented days and nights,

With a tormented scream

He looked his reflection in the eye

In his broken, frozen, heart

He willed himself to die,

With a thunderous clap

As if an ice sheet cracked

A white beam bounced between basilisk and mirror

And the basilisk’s vision blacked.

The black dragon paused and replaced the incense, blowing gently to light the new sticks.  His audience stared at him enraptured and when he turned back his nostrils seemed to glow red echoing the two gently burning embers behind him.  In the mirror there was a flash of scales, some in the audience saw white, and some saw black as if the former had been clouded with soot.

The basilisk awoke

In a plane of smoke and ice

The mirrors were clear

There was no sign of life,

There was frost, oh there was frost

Hoar frost and surface frost

Winding around frames and across the landscape

Searching as if it was lost,

There was ice coating the mirrors

Thick and clear

And there were statues in the distance

And an Ice Basilisk’s fear,

The Plane as far as the mirrors could convey

Was caught in winter, frozen

Every creature with sight was still

Every traveler and native person,

The power of his curse

Was undiluted by reflections

It had rebounded through the whole world

Catastrophic perfection.

For a moment the room was still as if the calamity of the Plane of Smoke and Mirrors had left the mirror.  The dragon closed his eyes for a long moment and when he opened them their light had dimmed.  “So it was that the Ice Basilisk realized the extent of his destructive potential.  It might not have occurred in any other Plane, it might not have been possible, but in a single moment of despair and self destruction he had frozen a world.  Yet his power left him untouched.  An irony that left him bitter for a very long time.  Rumors had been growing around him since he was first cursed and now they gained weight.  No one knew the origin of his destructive power, few even knew it was a curse.  He became reviled across Planes and Realms as the Ice Basilisk and whilst a few tried to capture or kill or, rarely, cure him they either ended up as ice or lost him when he changed Planes.  So, he continued his travels alone walking claw in claw with despair.”  The black dragon settled back down and his audience stirred uneasily.  He nodded to an elf and she stood striding to the window.  She threw it open and the winter wind rushed in scouring the room and biting noses and ears.  The smoke swirled obscuring the room and then fled.  The elf closed the window and those gathered looked around in the smoke free room their minds clear again.  The incense was dark and before the fireplace the stone gleamed queerly in the flickering firelight.  The black dragon was gone.  The kitsune scrunched up his face trying to sniff out the dragon but all he could smell was the bite of winter.  As he turned to leave out of the corner of his eye he saw a glint of scales in the mirror that leaned ever so casually on the mantle above the fire.

The Third Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Three

A kitsune scampered across the back of the couch proudly wavy his tails, yes tails, count them one, two!  The second tail was a recent addition of which he was most excited but not accustomed and the extra bushiness knocked over a glass of water.  Water pooled on the stone floor in front of the old dragon and the kitsune ceased frolicking and approached the puddle as if to lap it up and erase his clumsiness.  Before his tongue could dart out the water rose before his eyes.  Drop by drop the water rose to be suspended in the air as if the dragon was surrounded by glittering gems.  Affixed in space the water drops sparkled.  “Even so.”  The great black dragon spoke.  “Was the nature of the first Plane our young lizard saw when he left the Ice Plane of his birth.  Having grown up surrounded by frozen water with its liquid state mysterious and fleeting, or else hidden down, down, below the ice, he was fascinated by the concept of world where water was predominately liquid rather than frozen.  So it passed that one day the young lizard bid farewell to his parents thanking them for their love and knowledge and he reached for the sky.  To his parents’ it seemed that the sky reached down and enveloped their son in soul piercing blue that blinded them leaving only the blazing impression of shimmering wings seared across their vision.  When they could see again he was gone and where he stood was a puddle of liquid water rapidly freezing over.  He had gone, to the Water Plane.”

The Water Plane

Where every stone is rounded

Where the air is heavy with storms

Where the ocean’s vastness gives way only

To the stone of islands and the barriers between fresh and salt

Is the Water Plane.

Mighty currents fling the oceans

Round and around

Or over edges

Whales and dragons cavort

In the joyous rush of the seas.

Sweet, fresh, waters

Lakes vaster than any throughout the known universe

Have currents of their own

Have names for the tides.

Twin moons dance across the skies

As they summon the tides

Across the Plane.

On the islands and the bands of land

That keep lake from sea and sea from lake

Mountains rise in high divides

To keep back the influence of tides,

Here where land and air may meet

Water plays in gentler forms,

Springs bubble up

Spilling over stone and moss

Feeding life that bedecks the land

Lush and rich and green,

Waterfalls tumble

With gay abandon

Over stone and through air

Flinging themselves joyously

Their journey ending only in lake or sea,

Fountains carve the stone

Forming basins and spouts

In which to frolic.

Overall the lands and seas and lakes falls rain,

Gentle drops that nourish the land

Plinking softly among their brethren,

Fierce thunderstorms that scour the Plane

Raindrops gleaming fiercely with lightning

As they hurtle through the air,

Mists that pervade the atmosphere

That no breath is undrunk

That no ray of light shines

Without casting a rainbow.

The lizard’s scales gleam white

Coated in shining drops of liquid

As he gazes about the Plane in awe

Unheeding the heat in his delight,

He swims with the cetaceans in the ocean

Learning their songs and speaking of ice,

He debates with the dragons

Of the merits and mysteries of water

In its many forms,

He is marveled over by merfolk

Scorned by squid

Welcomed by whales

Bemused by beavers

Delighted by dippers

Alarmed by alligators

Puzzled by plankton

Sighed over by sand lizards

Tarrying in time.

The dragon took the drops of water and formed them into the shape of a lizard before him.  The lizard gleamed and flickered in the fire light.  “Thus it was that the lizard discovered a kinship with the Water Plane rife as it was with ice in its liquid form, or so he saw it.  Even after he had ventured into other Planes and even the Realms he returned from time to time not only home to the Ice Plane to expound upon the world in the company of his parents, but also to the Water Plane.  It was there, on an island at the edge of the smallest of the lakes, that he was cursed.”  There was a collective pause as the audience sat motionless waiting for the dragon to continue.

The Curse of the Ice Basilisk

Bronze scales shimmered oddly

Under the light of the twin moons

A sand lizard scorned

Gazed down upon the ice lizard

On the shores of obsidian

Relentlessly shifting under his feet,

“For your wandering feet hast cost you my love

Wander you shall through Planes and Realms

Never more to rest, or know the touch of friends

As your heart is frozen so you shall freeze

The bodies of others who dare meet your gaze

And nevermore shall you sleep

In the same world beneath the same moon!”

With a crack of thunder their gazes met

Two lizards on a shore no more

An ice stature stood atop the cliff

And on the beach an ice basilisk wept.

The water figure of the lizard froze and shattered.  Ice dust disappeared in nothingness and the dragon’s audience jumped.  “It began that night for though he wept the ice basilisk could not sleep.  Nor did he again until he left the Water Plane.  The universe is filled with Planes and Realms, more than any one creature has seen or documented.  Their multitude is the only reason the Ice Basilisk did not die for want of sleep, for in each realm he could only sleep for one month.  When the moon looked down upon him with the same face from the same sky he could sleep no more in that world.  The curse did not stop him from returning to such worlds but though he could he dared not go home.  The sand lizard who had tried to give him her heart was the first to freeze under his gaze, but not, alas, the last.”  Disturbed the black dragon’s audience looked at each other as if to reassure themselves that no one had morphed into a basilisk.  The dragon stood up as if to leave and the kitsune unabashedly pounced on one of his great black paws and looked up at him imploringly.  “But what happened?  His curse was broken wasn’t it?  Was it the phoenix? Was it?”  But the dragon only smiled toothily.  “That my child is for the rest of the tale to tell.  Rest assured your questions will be answered before the sun rises ten days from now.”  The kitsune thought that it might be a very long ten days even if it was filled with winter festivities.  The dragon didn’t have to draw the story out quite this much, did he?  Disgruntled and intrigued the kitsune padded off towards home in the winter night.

The Second Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

Yuletide: Night Two

When the next evening arrived, sooner than the previous one as winter solstice approached, the dragon settled in with his audience to continue his tale.  The wind had spent the day howling like a demon and ice fringed all the eaves and branches outside as if they were growing fangs to defend themselves against the cold.  Frost nipped the air and water froze before it could leave the spout out in the open air.  Inside it was warm but the cold made itself known crackling at the windows.  As the dragon opened his great maw to speak the wind shushed and the cold grew still as it pressed against the windows, they all knew the next Plane and gloried in its telling.  “Faraway another birth stirred a Plane, one which mirrored the Fire Plane, an opposite that burns with absence that seems ever present, the Ice Plane.  A plane of cold and water.  Cold so deep that rare was the water molecule that wasn’t bound in crystalline form.  As rare as the creature born upon that night…”

The Ice Plane

Where cold is more than absence

Where heat is a precious curiosity

Where water is locked in molecular bonds

No mortal dares to break

Is the Ice Plane.

Cold that steals breath and chills bones

Cold that braces and awakens

Cold that wraps around you

Promising life that gleams

Such is glory.

Ice spread across the land in crackling sheets

Ice forming jagged peaks so stark, so striking

Ice towering bergs of turquoise

Glaciers of might and age

Ancient conqueror.

Troth this might, this power, this magnificence

Troth the gleaming purity

Troth too the whimsy of frost

The beauty in a snowflake

The crocus in the snow.

The black dragon paused letting the listeners unwind from the glory of ice to the simple beauty of a crocus.  Quietly he stoked the fire.  The wind rustled at the window and he picked up the telling.

The wind howls across vast planes

Building power

Gathering shards of ice

Blasting stone into forms of its own making,

The wind swirls curiously

Twirling snowflakes through the air

Wafting the fragrance of flowers

Tucked in solid nooks of stone

Snowdrops and crocuses

Ice lilies with such delicate blue veins

On such, white, white, petals.

The frost plays wherever it pleases

Etching feathers and ferns

Where few warm-blooded creatures ever venture,

On sheets of pure ice

On boulders of black basalt

On flower petals,

Wrapping vines around stalagmites

Stalactites and icicles,

Etching flourishes on dragon scales

Embellishing the horns

Of fierce, shaggy, unicorns.

The Ice Plane is of cold

Of frozen water, and

Of magic.

The frost forms true ferns, ice ferns

Their plumes growing in clusters

Where the wind’s tread is soft,

And more than feathers

Born of frost are birds

Frost phoenixes, ice gryphons

Little white wrens and translucent nightingales

Snowy owls whose feathers melt

When bereft of their creator’s magic.

It was a night when the wind howled

Even in the ice caves deep in the mountain valley

A night when icicles rose like stalagmites

From the cavern floor

Where two great ice lizards proudly looked on

As their egg rocked on the floor,

At first it was a gentle rocking

A faint tapping from within

As if a baby narwhal was testing ice for flaws

Even as the parents smiled in their musings

With a great crack that rang across the Ice Plane

As if the ice itself had broken

The egg split in twain,

There, in the middle of the shell fragments

Sat a white gleaming lizard

As if he’d never stirred a paw to break out

For a moment his parents thought

But it couldn’t be could it?

That they saw a pair of shimmering wings

As if their baby had broken out of the shell

With a single reach towards the sky

But the moment passed.

For many years thereafter

The family roamed the Ice Plane

The baby lizard growing up

Content in the knowledge

His parents proffered for his eager education

And for a time there was no sign of that shimmer

That translucent glimmer

Of wings.

But sometimes, when the wind was strong

He would look to the sky

As if dreaming

That the wind would snatch him away,

Or as if he had only to stretch

And his own wings

Would gift him with the sky.

For a long moment there was silence, as if the cold and the wind had coiled around the building like a dragon themselves, smug from hearing their own tale.  Inside the listeners pondered the mystery of shimmering wings and looked at the windows etched in frost.  The dragon hummed low in his throat and they drew their attention back to the storyteller.  “For a long time the young lizard was content exploring the Ice Plane with his parents, content with learning all they had to teach about their glorious world of ice and cold.  But a mind that thirsts for knowledge will soon drink dry the wells of home and so too it was with this one.  To the Ice Plane he was born but he would not stay.  And so in due time, undue time as far as his parents were concerned, he left.  Whereto I shall leave for another night.”  His audience grumbled and applauded and returned to their own lives with shining eyes.  The old black dragon slid into the night and gazed up at the stars.  The cold caressed his scales and the wind howled an accolade. 

The First Night of Yuletide 2018 CE

The Tale of the Ice Basilisk’s Heart

Yuletide: Night One

Fire crackled in the hearth, warm golds and reds, sending shadows dancing about the room.  Salamanders giggled in the ashes and a black dragon curled sinuously before the hearth raising his great head to command the silence of his audience.  They stilled where they had settled.  Humans and elves cuddled in on couches and cushy chairs or sprawled among their friends on the floor.  Equine forms kneeled gracefully on warm rugs.  Other dragons melded with the shadows in the room’s margins.  Avians perched here and there, a raven on the bookshelf, a phoenix on a dragon’s shoulder, an owl on the back of an armchair.  Felines great and small lounged wherever they pleased be it the back of a couch, an elf’s lap, or the back of a dragon.  The wind outside paused its roaring as if the winter’s night too listened.  “I shall begin the tale now of twelve of the Planes as traversed by two beings opposite in form but not in troth.  The tale of the Ice Basilisk’s Heart.  It begins with fire for hearts are not possessed by one being alone and to understand this tale we must first understand the Fire Plane…”

The Fire Plane

Merrily crackle reds and golds

Dancing flames like marigolds

Caught in the eternal breeze

That fans the flames

Of the Fire Plane.

White is the flame that sears the eyes

Brightest of blazes the colors canceled

By perfect balance

The heat of stars

Pure, clear, bright.

Sly the hiss of purples and blues

Hotter, deadlier, slyer they burn

Dragons amongst the salamanders

Their intensity slips them

To the edge of vision.

The horizon is a mirage an endless heatwave

The ground is minerals hot and dry

Shifting sands in rolling dunes

Sharp stones dark and wicked

The legacy of lava.

Fire as stone molten burning

Overwhelming the land in relentless floods

Fountaining up into the sky

Glorious red arcs and sparks

The blood of the Earth.

Amid this conflagration

This celebration of heat

Revels of untamed elemental joy

Are gentler expressions of fire

Delicate workings

Sunnier lands where good cheer holds peace.

Bronze trees rise about oases

Water shimmering gold from flame

Curling crimson petals

Spiral on updrafts

Perfuming the air

Sweetness to match the smoke,

Hardy grasses cover fields in gold

Through which wildfires run gaily,

Sparkling in nooks and crannies

Or columns rising to the sky

Gems catch the light for their own,

Smoky blossoms open at night

Silhouetted against eternal fires,

Tiger lilies bloom in pockets of soil

Perched on stone cliffs

Of ancient lava falls.

Salamanders’s hissing laughs

Blend with the Autumn colored fires

In which they dwell,

Vermilion frogs with leopard spots

Born to fire and dry to the touch

Snatch lava drops from the air,

Graceful equines pirouette

Among curtains of flame

White on white,

Dragons fly their scales alight

Or dark and sleek as they dance

Twining with blazing infernos,

Above the rhythm of the hiss, the crackle, the roar

Through all the colors of the fire rainbow

A melody rises sweet and pure

Ringing with joy

A phoenix is born.

The visions lingered in the minds of audience and storyteller as he waxed poetic and almost, at the edges of their minds, they could feel the heat and smell the smoke from more than their hearth fire.  The fire popped but no one stirred still caught in the webs of fire.  The dragon paused letting his listeners find their way back into the room in which they sat before continuing his story.  “Fire warms and burns and heartens and it was in the Fire Plane itself that the phoenix Lyra was born.  A phoenix who would become known across Realms and Planes alike though to many her name is lost.  It is in her that we begin to understand the Ice Basilisk’s Heart though she fledged in fire before the Ice Basilisk was so much as a gleam of frost.  But the tale of his birth Plane is for another night.”  So the dragon finished, and his bemused audience applauded with great respect.  Even if he must leave things at the very beginning, and an unexpected beginning at that, talk of the Fire Plane had warmed their hearts and visions of flame kept them warm as the slept that cold winter’s night.

Happy Birthday Mom-2018 CE

Stone and Life

Heat enough to sear the soul

Sends molten stone pouring

From the veins of the earth

Into the complex sphere of life,

A vast churning atmosphere

And inexorable time

Wick away the heat

Leaving stone in their wake,

Stone, bedrock of the land

Cools and subsides

Coils solidify and pillars coalesce

Basalt waits, dark,

Lichens move in

Chasing the sun

Changing the stone

Bringing life,

Herbs and shrubs encroach

Settling comfortably

In soil borne of the efforts of lichens

Of and on the stone,

A lizard happens by

Under a winter sun

Pausing to enjoy the heat

The stone has faithfully garnered,

A kitten curls up

On a patch of stone yet bare

Highlighted by the sun

Warmth in a cold world,

A raven perches

On a proud basalt pillar

Surveying the world

Brought to be by stone,

Stone soaks in the sun

A bright warmth

Sparking the memory

Of ancient heat,

Lending its strength

Forged by the heart-fires of the Earth

To holding the warmth of the sun

And giving it to the creatures of life.

My mother is stone and lichen and raven.

My father is lizard and I am kitten.

She is stable as bedrock, giver of warmth, tender of life.

We are not From this World

We are not from this world

We are not in this world

We are not on this world

We are not of this world

We are the world,

The air in our lungs

Is the air that circuits this planet

The blood in our veins

Holds the waters of this world

The minerals in our bones

Are from the bones of the Earth

What we do to the world

We do unto ourselves.