hundaheili

There's a whole world in there, even if it is too dark to read.

He dreams at least twice daily. The machine is pneumatic, driven by the black bellows of his chest. You hear it from across the room when the switch is thrown, or the coal piled on, or however the dwarflike governors of dream start the thing in motion: the air is sucked into the engine and then expelled, moist with fantasies of squirrels and twittering birds. He runs (you can see his feet twitch), he snarls (you can can see his lips wrinkle), and he laps water (you can hear his tongue slapping in his mouth). Chasing even shadows of cats as these is thirsty business. The artificers can be justly proud of their work and ring for more coal from below.

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She has been under the river for months, face turned upwards, with the winter flowing over and around and past her. Now finally she comes to: Long ragged lines being cut into the surface from above. The birds are returning.