“The leaves of the trees did draw blood, and briefly the droplets, red as the first murder, quivered on the leaves’ serrated edges, Then each drop ran unnaturally fast down the veins to the heart of the leaf and the leaf drank in the blood, turning an old horrible red like the sun ending in murk…
“Once, the trees before him parted, bending like willows in a wind, and millions of particles billowed in the air, minute and sharp and dry like glass dust; he tilted back his head and saw, swooping overhead, a dragon vast as a lake, its hide polished smooth as a dark mirror, its wings taut like sails, its tail a knife across the sky, the forest bending before the wind of its coming.”
from Dante’s Heart by Stant Litore.
Illustration by Roberto Calas.
You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MQC0AR8
And you can support more work like it here: http://www.patreon.com/stantlitore
“Dante’s Heart is like Clive Barker, Octavio Paz, and Dante Alighieri are playing D&D together. Lush stuff and more imaginative than most fantasy fare.” – Marc McDermott
“Dante’s Heart isn’t as much a story as it is an epic poem. Visually and emotionally evocative, it seems to be this gifted author’s heartfelt rumination on pain, loss and the human propensity toward violence. To read it is to step through an oil painting into another world. But beware: Once there, you may have trouble finding your way back out. Not that you’ll necessarily want to, because Dante’s Heart is both terrifyingly and achingly beautiful.” – Michael Whiteman Jones
