The hearth of the world burns low, and its last sparks have wandered — small warm things, grazing the dark hill the way sheep grazed a summer that is gone. You are their shepherd. But you are made of old winter now, and nothing warm can bear to be near you. So you keep them the only way that remains: stand where they must not go, walk your cold in a wide circle behind them, until home is the only direction left. Not one of them will ever know your name.