- Portent -

THE FIRST drop hissed into the snow, its remains a crater, stained green, like a dead eye staring back at the sky.

Another embedded eye. Another.

The pristine snowfield became pocked with green, rotting under unseasonable rain. Rivulets began to form, eating deeper as they flowed.

More drops fell.

Beneath the snow, those asleep in their shells knew only the regular, once-weekly beating of their hearts, dreamed only of the coming warmth, when their world danced closer to its partner sun. Under the open fronds of the Nirltrees, they would teach their offspring. It had always been thus. It would always be thus. The Great Sleep was their salvation, the snow their protection.

They were wrong.

The green rivulets melted deeper and deeper. Soon, they flowed over what seemed a bed of immense pebbles, each regular in form and smooth, as if polished.

The pebbles were seamed, the edges held by ligaments laced together like so many fingers in prayer. Admirable defense against cold and predator, but the ligaments rotted away as the rivulets touched them. The halves of every pebble fell open, exposing the flesh within, flesh that dissolved in the flood before it could awake to scream.

The shells melted almost as quickly, washed away with the dormant stumps of the Nirltree grove, even the roots of the trees dissolving as the green drops penetrated the frozen soil. Drops and rivulets joined into a widening river, washing away the snow, dissolving all life that had sheltered beneath it, scouring the mountainside until all that remained was rock.

Where the river flowed into a cirque, becoming a limpid pool of green, mouths gathered.

And began to drink.