With the day, the wind came. The dawn, lasting longer each morning than the last one, drove the dark floes against each other, blowing them across the sky like seaweed on the ground. The movements became more rapid, alternating sun and shadow on my scales as I climbed up to just below the floating colossi of solid water, which took in more water each day.

In a few of these short and ever shorter days, the sky would be completely overcast, impenetrable with ice during the long night that would follow, as it did every year.

I was not surprised by the steady throbbing that came to me that morning from an indeterminate direction, strong as the heart of the whales and probably reflected dozens of times by the sky and the earth. I had heard it many times in the past months and forgotten it again, just as I had forgotten the many things and beings that did not remain. At midday, when the old sun rose once more and sent her rays through the ice floes to me, the throbbing became clearer.

The whirring of the ice was new. It grew louder than the wind, and the alien thing obscured my sky for long moments as it displaced the bursting floes, swirled and finally left them behind, dancing on peaceless water.

The sky turned for a moment as the current glided over me; then the calm returned, with the wind gently pushing the ice floes against each other and the sun stretching out its last rays towards me.

In this world, nothing changed. The ice would come and the long night, like in this year and all those that followed. I continued to wait.