Fragments from the Vault #026: Age of Wonders

"As fields fell to frost and star, we fled to warmth-clad caves to craft our tales of ash and fire..."

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Game: Horizon Zero Dawn

Location: The Long Coast

More information: Horizon Zero Dawn Wiki | Fandom

Falls of the west. Photo credit: FetchQuester

On a bristling island in the swell of the Pacific,

Among an archipelago earthed on a broad volcanic crest,
We pitched our raft and lugged our satchels along the shore

To trace the sky pastures of our ancestors' cradle,

Grazing our heels as we perched in tide pools

While the heat lifted the sea-dew from our skin.

"There is no world," you told me, 

"More bewildering than the one we meet at first light,"

And I, exhaling from my bones, 

Prophesized how, in the harvests of the Holocene

You, the Sun's consort, would gift us a drought

So pure that the oceans wept for their Mother,

While I nestled beneath the brow of those mountains

To whom the youth of planetary rings paled in their dust

And soul-sang from the depths of my marrow.

You were our sentinel, I believe. Before the Derangement.

Aloy of the Banuk. Photo credit: FetchQuester

Sunset on Meridian. Photo credit: FetchQuester

- Lucy A.

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Sources: 

Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West (Guerrilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment); fandom.com; with influences from Gwendolyn MacEwen's "The Water-Bearer"

*Dedicated to Craig and Elvira, who inspired the Fragments project.