The dark, foaming ice-shored river pulsed against an irregular sheet of glass, thick and black. Wounds sat in the surface where the water had managed to lick its way free, with further cracks along the outer edge where the ice collided with stone. All was grey, or white, or pock-marked with these black edges.

His soul swooned slowly where it sat ruminating in the dark, listening to the silvered notes of water dripping; of ice shards creaking, the simultaneous whispering of snow as it touches down and the soundlessness.

Snow eddied in a horizontal blur. The air was white-washed, forcing an opaque haze to the periphery. The build-up evened out the terrain. It was hard in places, packed tight wherever something had tread upon it. Flakes drifted sleepily against a backdrop of misty lamplight; except in this case they were not lamps, only the crowded clusters of fungi decorated with bonnets of snow, or wreathed in ice.

He saw none of this. He knew of it the way one knows their own dreams; the limitations of one's self inside their own head. It is all that he is - a mind in the dark. It will soon be time to wake.

He reaches out through the soundscape he is privy to, through the detachment of the dream, and the spark sweeps from him and rebounds. From a carousel of sensation comes some order - an awareness beneath the flow of energy. As it sinks back in to him he feels his eyelids flicker. They open to darkness, but not pure darkness. It is a livid green darkness; the blackest black transitioning to a shining green. Streaks of blackness lick at the windowpane. It wants to come inside, but he does not want it here with him. It is cold.

He soaks in the warmth of his own body as he becomes aware of it. A narrow chest leading to a tight belly. Cramped limbs tucked there, smooth toes pinching where they meet. Nobby knees beneath his chin. He can move his nose first, uses it to palm the window's surface; that's how he knows cold, that's how he decides he does not like it. Better here, he thinks. Warm, together.

The darkness shifts beyond him. It hits the window like a baseball thrown with too much force; the world shudders, moans, and the cold spreads. Not just the cold, either - the wet. Over the top of his head where his curved ears flap like butterfly wings, the cold drips upon the crown of his head, fingers its way along his snout. Another finger presses upon the base of his skull and the hairs on his spine raise.

'You have to wake up,' But he doesn't want to; even as the world slowly becomes aquatic and his limbs face the encroaching numbness of the cold, he resists. He feels the mucles in his haunch twitch without his order. He presses his nose upon the glass again, entreating the darkness outside with his will; please leave me be, please let me sleep, please -.

Another punch to the glass comes, reverberating around him. An answer he does not want. The window cracks, spidering across the surface, and the river reaches in to retrieve him. Water inundates his entire universe: in through the nostrils, down between his teeth as his mouth hinges in protest, unable to make a sound before the taste hits the back of his throat.

His limbs flex in shock to the sensation of crowding cold. It is not unlike the dream. Slowly but surely he gets his tucked limbs under control as they unfurl around him. The darkness isn't so dark, now. The green is gone - and as he bobs to the surface his head clonks a new window, misted white and thick.

He tucks his legs and goes belly-up against it, clawing with his toes,
tap - tap - tap.

He finds a hole. More like, the river pushes him to where it pushes everything, and by fate alone there is a gap large enough for his nose. It sweeps him on down and he stops at another, this time wedging his head up and out, feeling a pinch as he forces his ears through. One of them tears, he is sure of it. Pain is new, but it is numbed, and he doesn't know to be thankful for that.

The glassy surface of the ice creaks and heaves, and the river pushes him free. The sound of crunching snow accompanies his flailing limbs. He is deposited far from where he started but he does not know it. His eyes are open. He takes a breath - gasping around the falling snow and feeling the white motes touch upon his tongue only to melt away.

The dream is over.

Lithos's emergence would not have gone unnoticed, strong cast or not. While fat flakes swirled around the newborn pig and stuck to his thin bristles, Polaris's ambient noise shifted to the creaking and grinding of stone-on-stone.

Golems - ever-present in Polaris - clustered around any shell they could find, boulders churning to a halt as they awaited whatever was within's awakening. No amount of snow or ice could deter them from seeking out the empty chrysalises of long-gone children. They did, at least, usually have the apparent courtesy of hanging back. This one, a monstrous six feet high and front-heavy enough to walk on four stony limbs, did not.

It lumbered straight towards the piglet and all the frosted gemstone lying around him, each step sinking heavily into the layer of snow on the ground.

@Lithos

Everything transitions from the ethereal to the real far too fast. One moment everything is white, soft, and cold - the next the ground is rumbling beneath the newborn and the reverberation is pulsing through his flesh. He becomes aware of the rough textures beneath the snow as they dig in to him. He kicks the air, more like a tortoise caught upended than anything, only managing to roll to his side by the time the stomping of a great stone-carved construct strides closer.

Stride is the wrong word; it vacillates between one place and the next with as much finesse as a drunken elephant. Each stride booms and crunches in tandem as the snow and stone are pummelled. The large body of the approaching shape collects the snow but moves on unhurried and unaffected, zeroed-in and purposeful.

At first Lithos feels the tendrils of fear crawling up the back of his neck. He doesn't know what the shape is or what this feeling means, and hurries to get to his feet before it swipes him or crushes him beneath a single step. He thinks he is the target and rises in a frenzy to move - only to be utterly ignored.

The shape moves to the riverside and Lithos watches it; he creeps closer and feels emboldened when the focus of the living stone remains locked at the river's edge. He stops beside it, sinking in to snow, and innocently stares at this thing which is at least four times his own size, the fear having melted away to wonder.

The amalgamation continued, at first, to pay attention only to the chrysalis now left behind by the fleeing Lithos; its feet stomped through the snow, gathering great clods of it that were shed with every lumbering step. Shards of peridot were the focus of its interest, and it stopped in front of the shattered chrysalis. There was magic here, there - pebbly fingers curled around the occasional piece. It pressed stray stones to itself, adding to the crystals that already were there.

Small as the shell was, there weren't many shards that retained enough of a magical charge to have become another chrysalis - or another adornment on its body. It ground to a halt, boulders shifting this way and that before landing on the pig creeping close.

It lived, breathed, thought. That gleaming in the one eye... a stone.

The golem's focus visibly shifted, individual stones churning so it faced Lithos. It was drawn to him, like he held some strange gravity or magnetism. A stony fist slowly reached out for the pig, unfurling and vying for the snout.

@Lithos

The large thing did not appear to notice him at first. It trundled through the snow alongside the river, shuffling along like a truffle pig with what he could only presume was its face - or a sensing organ of some kind - and proceeded to gather up shards of his discarded chrysalis.

The shards were then jammed against its body, which Lithos found peculiar for a few seconds but being young, he accepted the performance as he'd accepted everything else so far: this was life. Of course something would exist to help dispose of the chrysalis; this immense stone-thing might have been eating it for all Lithos knew, or collecting it for dispersal, perhaps seeding the shards through the cave system in an automated fashion. Whatever the reason for its gathering it was an act of entropic assistance, and Lithos watched as the bits and pieces were inserted among the hommonculi's stacked parts.

The grinding of parts made Lithos' ears curl, and he could not help but duck away from the noise as if it were a solid mass looming over him. When the noise picked up volume and a shadow crossed over his little ginger self, he looked back - and sucked in a breath when he recognized part of the large thing was leveled at him; over him, rather, and getting nearer. He sprang to his hooves and tried to back out from the shadow, but he tripped himself up and fell back with a thud.

The stone "hand" snatched for snout, missing by mere inches as the little piglet dropped to its rump.

A pause, then, a grinding, as though the golem were slowly considering how to react to this unexpected display.

Then the hand curled into a vast, stone fist. Lifted high... and began a sweeping, powerful descent, as though to crush Lithos beneath. It was after the poor piglet's stone, and though Lithos couldn't know it, he could could see the deadly boulder-fist crashing down for his head.

It would be wise to move. Perhaps, to flee.

@Lithos

The shadow extends to block the light over him and he scrambles to stand up, tripping on his own feet and destabilizing his sense of balamce by moving too quickly. He runs off-kilter and nearly face plants; that stone fist is poised to crush him and he has to go go go move pig get outta the way - !!!

He nearly doesn't make it. The panic fills him with the instinctual desire to flee the scene, unlike moments before when Lithos was passively enjoying the company of the stone creature. He knew better now - and he wpuld not make the same mistake of trusting these amorphous things again!

The Golem slowly pushed back upright. Its shift to face the fleeing piglet was almost mechanical: boulders shifting, rearranging, so that the figure itself seemed to change orientation. Then it began the slow stomp after Lithos, but it would not be able, or perhaps willing, to keep up. In fleeting seconds, Lithos would have left it behind.

The thundrous steps behind him, though, were a reminder of the danger of the Golems.

@Lithos