Fine snowflakes drifted down like scattered grains of salt, covering the mountains and rivers, blanketing the streams, and whitening the endless fields.
A thin layer of snow had already accumulated on the straight, broad road. With snow falling and the roads slick, there were few travelers to be seen.
Just then, a crisp jingling rang out as a carriage came galloping from afar. The horse drawing it was an ordinary black horse, nothing remarkable about it. Yet what was remarkable was that the carriage did not travel down the middle of the Official Road. Beside the black horse pulling the carriage, running abreast along the center of the road, was a sleek-furred, majestic... mule!
Oh, no. Looking more closely, it was a Four Unlike—like neither deer nor deer, neither horse nor horse, neither ox nor ox, neither donkey nor donkey. On its back seemed to rest something that was neither quite a sword nor not a sword!
The Four Unlike raced easily down the very center of the Official Road, its broken-antlered deer head held high. Its ox-like hooves landed steadily upon the snow. What was even more astonishing was that whenever the black horse beside it slowed or veered a little crookedly, its donkey-like tail would swish and slap the black horse on the rump, as though reminding it.
Seated atop the carriage drawn by the black horse was a lean young man. His eyes were closed as he rested his mind, his hands arranged in an exceedingly profound gesture. He looked as though he had already fallen asleep; everything appeared utterly ordinary.
Yet anyone truly attentive would have clearly seen that, although the swirling snowflakes filling the sky grew ever larger and stained all things white, they did not seem to disturb the young man's pleasant dream in