“Sometimes, I am not a man,” he said slowly. “I am the mountain.” And for a dinma, Misaki wondered if he had gone insane—if they had both gone insane—but he kept speaking. “It is a state I have been able to effect since I was a child. I retreat deep into the snow and rivers and sink myself into the ocean below, and everything on this mountain becomes me, and I become the mountain. It looks like meditation, but it is more. It is becoming a different sort of being.”
