Now we’d all been sent out of the cave and into the forest, where we were deposited under a large spruce tree to meditate until the moon was at its zenith.
I didn’t put much stock in meditation, frankly, but it gave me time to mentally work on a new composition, which I hadn’t had the time for since… well, since Texas. The notes started slow and languid, soft and supple, before building into a heart-racing crescendo and crashing again.
The moon climbed across the sky as I played it over and over inside my head, tweaking it with each pass, adding more depth and heat. But it wasn’t until the bear attendant came for us—in full shift, no less, so he towered over even the tallest of us—that I realized it was the feeling of falling in love with Dirge that I was composing. Every up and down, ev
