The ether flows in the bedroom window , it creaks and crackles in my lungs. My body flexes and fluxes , riding a tension between fortitude and frailty. My heart loves the delicious, chilled scent , my respiratory system seems less sure. This icy draught has flowed off the melting polar mass , buffeted the south seas, it has spread a vintage of rust on the fishing fleet of Bluff , dribbled snow on Aoraki, it has whipped up the peppermint peaks across Wellington Harbour and now it is inside me. We have become one, intoxicating and oxygenating , the stuff of life and the bringer of …well not quite yet.