. . .

One morning Vaenwode wakes up, and he plays with the hair of his sleeping wife, and then a horror grows from a sudden cavernous emptiness and coldness inside him. It sweeps across him, makes him shudder and curl, as if he were a soap bubble trying to hold itself from popping, as if he were the caryatids, floor, and ceiling of some circled vault.

He loses his senses for a time, simply sweats there, and he comes to know the presence of the wolf.

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