Burning Daylight

A titan forged in permafrost—raw knuckles, frostbitten breath, auroras dancing in his pupils—Burning Daylight claws nuggets the size of musket balls from the Yukon’s white throat and rides south on a white stallion of optimism. The Klondike’s howling emptiness has taught him only one grammar: dig, sweat, own. Manhattan’s spires, however, speak a crueller tongue of ledgers, lobbies, lacquered smiles. In a mahogany casino scented with Cuban smoke, a cabal of silk-clad hyenas skin him of every glinting coin; the titan awakens penniless on a bench, newspaper for a blanket, the Statue of Liberty’s torch reduced to a mocking matchstick. Yet the same ice that once rimed his beard now crystallizes resolve: he will learn the predators’ choreography, beat the carnivores at their own carnivorous waltz, and ascend once more—this time with blood under his fingernails and a grin sharp enough to slice throats in the dark.