An invisible layer of ice will be forming on the cave walls, as if reproducing there an image of the sickness of the ever more barren and inert earth, as if the blood of animals and the sap of plants were about to shut down forever after spewing a great mouthful of death. Neh-el will cry out in the winter forest. His voice will have so many echoes that no beast will be able to locate him; his voice will be the disguise of neh-el the hunter. That voice will spread across the blinding white of forests, plains, frozen rivers, and a sea astonished at its own motionless chill … It will be a solitary voice that will become multitudinous, because the world will have become one great dome of white echoes. In the cave, you will not cry out, ah-nel, you will sing, crooning to the girl who soon will have lived three flowering seasons, but in your den of stone your voice will resonate so strongly that the crooning will sound like a cry. You will be afraid. You will know that your voice will always be yours but now will also belong to the world surrounding you with threat.
