The Year One,
The West Wind labored day and night to sweep the ash from the air. The sulfurous, crimson remains mingled with the azure backdrop of mirrored sea and sky until earth and heaven melted into one unending purple spectrum, as if the wind flew with lavender wings from one horizon to the other. Month by month, year by year, the wind carried the smoldering ash to the eastern boundary of the sea and let it fall to blanket the coast until a desert of red dunes glittered in the sun like goosebumps on the skin of the world, stretching up and down the shore as far as the eye might see.