Beware if you would stake your empire on such fragile architecture—
subsidence is common, the way the maw of the world opens to
consume what you have built. How with shorter nights,
monsters escape their long captivity from a palace
of ice, leave your cattle felled, leaking blood, tar what rises
darkening the thick moss in the active layer— smoke & gas
into ethereal emptiness
On such warming ground, beware the beast— night shroud
it will sporulate given oxygen. Bury the body deep,gathering
chip into a rot of crumpled permafrost to put it down,
make a coffin for it from gravel and mud. Fire works too,
but use caution, open flame on the tundra will hasten the thaw,
release a long belch of carbon from the bowels of unstable ground—