Over the sea, a guillemot glided out of the mist and soared over the basalt stacks glossy with spray. Dawn broke with a shimmer of amber and gold, and the stars sunk deeper into the dying night. Below, a seal broke the steely grey folds of the sea to come ashore upon the jet black sands. Inland, encircled by trees laden with frost, three horses tossed their shaggy manes. They chased each other over the frozen ditches and trailed the bird towards midday rising in the north. It was here, suspended upon the arctic winds that the guillemot extended its dusky wings over the lava fields, and surveyed the land shaped by the passing hands of time. All things merged without beginning or end to produce a restlessness, a barren land tingling with the expectation of Spring.     

Hours passed and the swollen clouds decanted snow upon the craggy peaks of the huddled mountains. Creeping glaciers crackled in the stillness, melting into milky white streams that bubbled and flowed into the thrashing river that plunged into a seething pool. Spectral forms rose from the waterfall, and with gauzy breath they spoke of the constant flux of birth and death. The wind echoed their words and the afternoon sky shifted. Deepening grey clouds cast long shadows across the quartz clear sky, and shaded the hills with graphite and lead. Stones tumbled by the elements lay petrified beneath crystallised lakes, their wind polished surface mirroring the opaque sky. To the west, winter storms had etched their signature across the landscape. In the still air, birdsong wove with the sweet smelling grass that rippled like a ragged sea across the lowlands, washing the scattered boulders smooth with olive green moss.     

The guillemot passed overhead and flew on to greet the dusk, its illusion falling in a succession of rippling, mellow pink veils over the slumbering volcano. As mighty snow drifts coloured bronze, copper and gold, the clouds of day passed from view, and an ancient contemplation washed the land. Snow settled into the folds of the mountains, and as the moon waxed into fullness, day passed into night, present into memory, and with the constant motion of life, death and rebirth, the shimmering emerald aurora danced across the sky.