The complacent, kept warm by a thin trickle of cheap fire, delight in its appearance, its cloying bright surface, its promise to mute or transform the their worn, everyday circuit. Only the wiser, those scarred by less verdant clime, discern its fell import.

After a brief overture, a moment of lace against streetlamp, it turns.

Gone are the light and lazy harbingers, replaced with a heavy, determined battery, set to fall hard, to stick fast. The thin voice of Borealis, alarmingly clear in the gathering dark, whispers of great ice sheets creaking, plotting a course.

As the very air betrays them, damping sound and pulling the horizon close, the old and the sick are beset with pulsing thought of swift grey shapes, low to the ground, circling, tireless, silent, and certain.