As quickly as it had appeared, the visage of THE Grey Mother disappeared as Noah looked away!
Around him, everything buzzed!
The moth bowed at this time.
It was a slow, enormus motion, the great wings lowering until the two vast eyes on them were level with Noah's face, and in both of them now, there was only one figure: Noah, whole, looking back, neither sleeper nor man in the snow, simply himself.
"You will be seen again, Dreamer," it said softly. "By her. By others. Walk carefully."
Then it came apart.
It simply loosened, quietly, every strand of black fur and glittering sand drifting away from every other, and fell upward into the dark like snow returning to the sky. The ash and the snow stopped together, and the obsidian rivers sank back down beneath a floor that slowly, piece by piece, turned to glass again.
The blue-gold came back!
