Hung with clouds of muted gray, the Bear Tooth Mountains, dominating the west and north, are smothered with massive wisps of white vapor, through which the hidden sky of true blue is glimpsed but barely as the riders roll through the narrow head of the pass.
Over the drab, crumbling, snow-dusted, sage-speckled hills to the east soars a gold-hued eagle—gone over the top before he can be pointed out.
Westward, above a water-carved, tree-dotted land, loom drab, wind-scoured hills, giving way to the evermore thickly-treed bulk of the mountains—their earthy flesh scored with pine-dotted creases. Here the hanging blanket of cloud pushes into the bare, stony chest of the mountains lost to sight below in their moist shrouds.
Further north, the jagged, knife-like teeth of the bleak-stone mountains pierce the cloud-streaked sky, snow clinging to the base of their earthy gums.
Northward gone, the cloud-ceilinged bowl of the world is crowned with bleak-stone teeth, their shoulders bristling bluish-green with pine, soaring oppressively over the drab-green, purple-dotted flats ever carven below.
Northward more, the cloud banks descend to cloak the mountains about their piney shoulders and veil their teeth.
Northward still, creeks begin to rush with the sweat of the mountains, the world widens, the distant, ever-more-barren, slate-streaked hills to the east receding, even as the north-marching banks of mountains to the west rise, deceivingly distant.
The high plain widens to a half day's walk for an ambling ape even as a hawk crosses it an mere moments.
Under the God of Things
