As with many pieces, music serves as something of a persistent inspiration; I hear music as I capture images, and as a result I often attempt to convey the tunes in my mind as I aim my camera in one direction or another. This image is no exception to that general rule, and for a quick listen to its musical soul feel free to click HERE. * Desolation stirs, And yet, as Nature’s method Unseals the royal tomb So through our ruin Might inspiration haunt us. —Hieronymus/Thirteen Invocations * It is three days to Kartag, by sleigh and by carriage: three days huddled beneath blankets behind a driver—himself blanketed. It is two nights in hostels along the road. All roads lead to Kartag, and though Holoda has taken his first step, he has not yet left the northern shore of Entis, has not yet bade farewell to the faces and the places that have marked his life since his earliest youth. He had dreamed, many times with his brother, of seeing far away places: farther than Kartag, farther than the southern cities of Hesk and Aóró. He had dreamed of adventures and the shocking charm of new languages spilling from his tongue. He had dreamed—as he still does—of the ruins of Sestria-Sestrián, where slaves revolted on a night of blood and fire, and where—on a night of blood and fire—free-men and free-women scattered in whatever directions the winds took them. Some—many of them—came here and founded the cities of Entis and Hör. Holoda has never known slavery, has never worn the marks of a whiplashes across his back. Holoda, as pale as an orchid and with hair the color of honeyed silk, has never wore the slave’s bracelet. He has never called a mortal man Master, not even in jest. Slavery is dead in the world now, though perhaps barbarians may still practice the custom. There are no barbarians on the northern continent, none to the continent south. The world differs from that of his ancestors, and where they might have lived in dread and loathing, he lives in the heart of insatiable curiosity. Even now, with one dead brother, and so only half the dreams he recalls, the urge to leave and to see is strong. “You’re a fool,” mother has said. “Your life is here.” Father, for his part, holds his silence, understanding—perhaps—needs Holoda cannot articulate. Father, for his part, has also spoken of the young man’s urge to flee the stifling sameness of Entis and to find riches in tombs long forgotten. What good are riches, after all, to the dead? What glories might one find, if—by fate’s wind—he comes into possession of some hero’s crown, buried in the dusts and the mud of Sestria-Sestrián. There may be luck in such crowns, such baubles from worm-corrupted corpses of Lords and their Ladies. Now, however, there is only snow, only ice, and the restive whisper of the Northern Sea, bestirred by storms far, far, to the east. The time for departure looms close, and Holoda—prepared—waits only for the right moment, the right sleigh-carriage to take him south. * This is another stretch of Lake Michigan—from the Chicago shore, just south of the shores of Evanston I’d photographed earlier. I’d gone with Corey to photograph ice and clouds, and this is one of the shots I’d managed. Now that Chicago labors through the aftermath of a blizzard, I'm a bit curious to see what it has done to the lake. I don't know if I'll see the result any time soon, but I'm sure that if I do, the music of other worlds will dictate what directions and distances I look into. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.