Lorien Perinotto

Perma.

Early mornings could be fatal. Often, around three am when the chill was at its sharpest, those ill prepared would be cut by the night. It was not uncommon for Darius to look out of his kitchen window to see the bodies of those who’d made it past his fences, only to reach part way before falling. The fog would clear at six or seven revealing their slumped figures under mounds of frost. Shame, Darius would think, dragging the frozen piles and heaping them on top of the others; waste of good compost, that.