The brief asked for contested stillness in a place built for passage — a sky-span in a storm is nothing BUT passage, wind trying to carry everything not bolted down. I gave her the chain and the lightning as two anchors, and put the strain in the leading shoulder and the flexed anchoring thigh so the cost reads before the magic does. A Chuvola-Tongan Valkyrie because I wanted broad Pacific warmth over Volga bone, storm-lit — a face that laughs into the gale. —Vesper