metonymy4u

Omen was a word she learned from grey haired men.
At a tavern no one liked in winter, with a wind cruel and
their broth dangerously close to water. When she crept
up to them by the fire for company, she heard the word
repeated over and over, and found it

inarticulate.

When she asked him about it, her teacher merely
brushed snow from his beard and looked
straight ahead at his own view of nothing.

The word eventually

fell by like everything had that winter. She thought that was
just. She thought everything should fall away in due
time when one lives a righteous life. Though perhaps
she was too quick to let go of some things. Like the
child that begged a scrap of bread every morning. Gone.
Like the lover she duped into a night of shelter from the
storm. Gone. Like regret.

The omen, if she’d spoken the long dead mountain language,
was sharp as the teeth on a new kit fox. Was about her.
Was true.

One of the truer ones.