There is no breath I can take that is as deep as one we take together. There is no dawn that stretches as far across the sky as those that break from our union. Bird song falters incomplete. Waves stumble upon banks and slip back into dark silence.

I am here eclipsed without her, anima and animus divided, the shadow of something large and earthly rumbling in slow revolution between us. And I pull up my knees and wait. I drum in the heat of her. I fall on sharp stone and bleed into it, lean into it, sway into the howl that begins in the first molecule and extends to the last shudder of being.

Hovel, growling on haunches, crawling on bellies under grey-tipped branches, the hole in the sky flickering in the lattice of broken fingers above. Wrong. Every cell screams the wrongness. I hear my own voice, primal, enraged, like a wounded god. I am bellowing and my eyes sting with pain.

I am lucky. In the small, throbbing death, I am shown the way. In the bear heart it is born again. In the wolf breast it grows strong and fierce. In the raven's wing it unfolds and disperses like seed that roots even in the shadows of gravitation.

I am patient with prey. It will be brought into the light, it will find the field and I will take it. For when you are hungry, you know the meaning of food. And I will have this thing I want, for only now do I understand how much it is wanted.

There's a planet between us. But it is moving. And my muscles tense, and I watch quietly, vision sharp, breath shallow, eager.