Well. Here we are, at the end. I can’t believe we’ve made ten whole issues together!

My love is a three-masted ship, proud and defiant against the very cheek of the fathomless deep, and I am her sailor spidered to the rigging; she is equally a lighthouse to my plover.

Wooden teeth, a painted snarl, fur around the crown. A mask meant to terrify winter itself into retreat. Meant to keep the things that lurk in the shadows at bay.

Night presses low across the rewilded floodplain when she steps from the truck and closes the door with a muted click.

There is a griffin on my ceiling. As I lie in bed I can see it—wings spread wide, just springing into the air from a jutting rock.