The Revenant

by Michael Punke

bedrock optimism,

weaknesses, which he confessed forthrightly, were simply barriers to be overcome by some creative combination of his strengths.

Yet for Glass the fort did not mark a finish line to cross with elation, but rather a starting line to cross with resolve.

Their great mass was a marker, a benchmark fixed against time itself. Others might feel disquiet at the notion of something so much larger than themselves. But for Glass, there was a sense of sacrament that flowed from the mountains like a font, an immortality that made his quotidian pains seem inconsequential. And so he walked, day after day, toward the mountains at the end of the plain.

pettifogger,

The brilliant sparkle of the great star Vega seemed suddenly to fight for Glass’s attention. Next to Vega he picked out the Cygnus, the Swan. Glass stared at Cygnus, and the more he stared, the more its perpendicular lines seemed clearly to form a cross. The Northern Cross. That was the common name for Cygnus, he remembered. It seemed more fitting.