Xochitl dreamt in sound, in smell, his whiskers twitching in his sleep when he stretched himself out long and low across the soft moor grasses, nosing in among the reeds.  First the earth-smell, wet and green.  The strange metal that bled through all of the moors, the copper-blood tinge behind his teeth.  The night air, chilled by the harvest moon, soft with starlight that Xochitl could not see but knew must be there.  And—

Something new and very old.  Ghostlight, not unlike Eltequi’s, but cold as bedrock, deep as undercurrent. 

In his dream, Xochitl turned blindly towards it. 

Its voice whispered: The Forge?

The Forge?

You are too far down, Xochitl wanted to say, and couldn’t.  His voice was nothing, extinguished by the night, by the strange, lawless restrictions of dreams. 

The Forge? begged the dream-soul, already fainter than it had first been, the smell wafting away on the prevailing wind, the words carried downstream and then gone—

~~~

When Xochitl awoke, it was to a new smell, the warm, solid shuffle of hoofsteps through the reedy grass.  Eltequi flitted upward from where it had nestled into his flank sharply, whistling a high, clean warning note, but Xochitl had already recognized it — the smell of a Courser, the particulars of the motion and scent. 

“Hello, Terrence,” he croaked, his voice rasping with sleep. 

“Morning,” Terrence answered, easy and unconcerned, although Xochitl felt the assessing cast of the mercenary’s eye across him.  “Sleep well?” 

“I—” 

Xochitl did not know.  He remembered the cold earth smell.  The anguished whisper. 

“I had strange dreams,” he said. 

“Ah well.”  He felt Terrence’s shrug.  “The Moors will do that, not to mention the Harvester’s spirits everywhere.  Nothing too bad, right?” 

“No,” Xochitl agreed.  “Nothing too bad.” 

~~~

He expected it the next night.  The stone smell.  The waft of oil and leather and strange hide, not of a Courser, nearer, whispering: The Forge?  The Forge?

Not here, he tried to say. 

The Forge?

In the dream, Xochitl shook his head.  His hooves were sinking into the wet moorland, his belly brushing across the low grass. 

Go up.  Go to the Furnace. 

This time the words came, but too late.  The spirit had already gone. 

~~~

“Fancy seeing you here again.  Don’t you usually stay in the Moors?” 

“I am doing somebody a favor,” Xochitl said, placing one delicate hoof and then another onto the long upward staircase that led to the Furnace.  “It will not be long.” 

“Huh,” Terrence said.  His voice — so briefly surprised — lapsed back to indulgence, amusement; comprehension.  “Sleep well, then.” 

The heat of the Furnace was already sinking into Xochitl’s thin hide, prickling sweat along his sides.

“I will.” 

~~~

Tonight, the smell of stone blended with that of the Furnace, the sulfur-shimmer always hanging in the air but most of all here.  

Xochitl heard the soft, pleased whisper of recognition: 

The Forge—?

Then silence.

The ghostlight had gone.