I live on a young island, with one foot on the Eurasion, another on the North Atlantic plate. Slowly, steadily, they drift apart, and the rift widens.

Our livelihoods are at the mercy of capricious weather; our fortunes rise and fall on the smell of sulfur and fish; our landscapes are of ice and snow, vented steam, and lava sculpted in tubes, scattered in boulders, ground fine as sand, wrapped in fragile mosses, three decades old and a spongey perfection.

The earth smokes, volcanoes belch, glaciers melt in great torrents, and seed, sewn neatly on narrow ribbons of fertile soil, are blown into Nazca patterns. This restless land, at once muscular and fragile, breeds liminal creatures, and we have those too: trolls, witches and ghosts ride our trails and hide in our caves.