The dreams were getting stronger.

Once he had only had vague flashes: a feeling here, a scent there. Sometimes he forgot he was under the covers and felt the warm comforting embrace of the earth. Once, a haunting choral piece had made him think of that temple, high on his peaks.

Now, though...

The wind howled and the mist broiled in the high valleys, thick and smoke; phantom waves crashing against craggy stoney shores. Up here, the sky was clear and pure. The peaks - his peaks, rose. They were so high. And jagged. Primordial as the Keeper who had fashioned him to his body as his greatest mountain range. Snow capped they were. Unyielding stone crowned in wreathes of ice at the top of the world.

His crown.

He could remember what it felt like, to tear through the barriers; to break free of the other limbs and bodies that resisted him, trapped together in their confinement. Oh how he had exulted in the age it had taken him to rise, to stretch, to spread himself across the world. But he had never seen himself. Not till now...

Freed of his corpulent form, long limbed, hued from granite, his hair ruffled by the winds, the Mountain Green marched across his own mighty peaks. His breath froze and misted before him. His tears clung in delicate chains to his cheeks. He was a mountain giant, king of his own land. He was the land and now he felt his own footprints carve into his stone skin.

He gasped at the marvel. His laughter rang across the peaks as he leapt from mountain to mountain. How come he had forgotten this?

Home.

Shocked at the sound of his own voice and the pumping of his own blood in his ears, Green snapped awake.

But he was only a stunted brute carved from rock in an unfamiliar familiar room. His room in Edna's boarding house. He lumbered through the confining space and drew back the curtains and found himself in a city of men.

The little folk were already leaving for the days labours - tiny lights in the morning gloaming.

No mountains.

They peaks called to him. Yearned for him. Lusted for him. He wanted to lay down with the granite. Caress the sandstone and run his hand through the shale and scree.

The memory caught in his throat and for the first time in an age the mountain was without breath.