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The first sign of my return to civilization was a graveyard.
“I am the shrill singer “Who rides a narrow road. “With two mouths I kiss hard “The hot and pliant maidens.” I blushed, because I hadn’t been expecting racy double-meanings from a dragon. But I knew the answer to this one, when I thought about it a little. “Hammer,” I said. And then, “Smith’s hammer.
“I am the black horse. “On eight legs I bear my rider. “He holds no rein. “At the end of the journey it is he who is left in the stall.” I am not sure dragons frown. Their scaled foreheads are not designed for furrowing. But I could not shake the sense that the dragon was frowning at me. After a little while, she responded calmly, “A coffin and its bearers.”
“We are the old women “Who walk on the beach “We braid the shells and seaweed “In our white hair.” “Damn,” I said. “Do you forfeit?” The dragon leaned forward eagerly. Its talons tensed as if already imagining raking through treasure. “Not so fast!” I held up a hand and tried to ignore the warmth of the dragon’s breath ruffling my hair. Unless that was just the wind off the volcano. What walks on a beach…? Crabs. Birds. “Waves!”
“I am a dragon with only one wing. “But of limbs I have a score. “I fly to battle. “I grow more fearful when I shed my scales.” “Really?” the dragon said. I spread my hands. The rock was making my backside ache. I tried not to fidget. It would only make me seem nervous. Of course, I was nervous. “A long-boat,”
“A stone on the road. “I saw water become bone.” How on earth did that happen? It was a metaphor, of course—riddles always were—but what was water a metaphor for? Blood that clots? A stone was hard, and so was a sword … brigands? Something that could stop a journey? No. No, of course not. The water wasn’t the metaphor. The road was the metaphor. The whale-road, the ship-road. The sea. What was a stone on the sea? “An iceberg,”
“Fat and full-bellied “Welcome and warm “I rise with joy “Though my bed is hard.” A loaf, of course.
One spark. Two sparks. Three. Deprivation. Corruption. Injustice. This is what it takes to ignite a revolution.
People in this World can’t survive without the voices in their heads.
They say your voice screams when it starts to die. And when your voice dies, so do you.
We assumed that because we could, we should.”
“I swear to Time, Space, and Eternity all I’ve said is true. May your bonds stay firm. May your paths lie open.”
our lives are mere infinitesimal drops in the totality of consciousness. That we ascribe ourselves with exaggerated importance when we are ultimately extremely insignificant creatures.”
“Humanity is like this insect, blithely unaware that it lives on a cliff’s edge, skirting death.”
“What niche does humanity fill as it multiplies across the stars, devouring planets like termites in wood?”
“All of us are dust already. Most don’t know it.”
Love is not something that happens to a person, but something a person does for another person, every day, every moment. A labor, not a feeling.
You will understand that cutting the forest down to have every piece doesn’t make the story go on—it makes it end.
‘Nothing is free, but death is freeing,’
if we are lucky, we live. If we are lucky, we do not lose more than we can afford.
