Seol opens her eyes to the gray dawn, startled, disoriented and gasping. Beneath the palm she had pressed to her bosom her heart skitters as if she had run a mile or climbed one of those steep boulders that nestled Song Ak.
Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath; thinking what had made her think of the boulders in Song Ak. The images of the dream she had been having slipped through the gaps of her conscious mind. She had been dreaming of mountains - not the boulders of Song Ak. Not the snowy caps of Shinju.
The mountains in her dreams were giant and ancient, snow blanketing them untrodden for centuries. She knows they were ancient and untrodden. But she cannot explain to herself how she knows and in that same way, she knows that the dream of those mountains, with wind howling between them, snow swirling on her wake and skies heavy with an oncoming storm was a sign of trouble.
