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Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">“As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their Proverbs; thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments. A Devil picked me out his Favourite Portion, and it said ‘The crow wish’d everything was black, the owl that everything was white.’”</span>
<span class="mu-i">Sierra Nevada Mountains, California State, Early November, 1859</span>
He bends prostrate before it. Tears wet crystal tracts down his cheeks in the cold. Ten thousand owls stand in silence above it. They perch on the many faces, the small fissures, the broken juts. The canyon maw is white behind it. White walls, white snow, a white moon and white stars. He is cold enough now that he no longer shivers. He is cold enough that his chest is warm. One last sob and he tastes the ice in his mouth, on his teeth, under his tongue.
He could lie and lie and eventually lie still. His hope is here in the canyon, bleached through and undone. How it happened he can’t explain, but here it sits and here it stays, until the world wracks to pieces. He comes to his knees. He will not die, not here, he cannot. He is too afraid of what might happen.
Smoke-in-his-Eyes lifts his head. His blood is blue and thick like syrup, needles skewer his legs. He tries to stand and falls once, twice. He tries again and gains his feet. The skull stretches before him, larger than a man, larger than a house, as large as the moon and the mountain itself. Owl’s skull. It fills his sight, but he turns away with a slow and ungainly shuffle. Away from his only hope.
His black oak staff rasps his hand as he levers it against the ground. He cannot change here, the eyes of the owls illumine his back and he would be rent like rotten leaves before his vault into the sky. He is a long time walking out of the canyon. Not once does he turn and look again, the cold savages his face and shoulders.
Stunned he walks, sullen he wavers. His steps hold no rhythm and he slips and falls prone, here on an ice patch under the snow, there on a root curling up from the ground. All the long and lonely way he thinks of the eye, he thinks of the dark and the night and the terrible cloak of those terrible feathers dipped in deepest black. The silence and the dread, they come for him. He is shivering now. He passes out of the canyon, ignoring the new snowfall, and changes. Then there is a raven flying down the mountain into the wood and meadow far below.
<span class="mu-i">Sierra Nevada Mountains, California State, Early November, 1859</span>
He bends prostrate before it. Tears wet crystal tracts down his cheeks in the cold. Ten thousand owls stand in silence above it. They perch on the many faces, the small fissures, the broken juts. The canyon maw is white behind it. White walls, white snow, a white moon and white stars. He is cold enough now that he no longer shivers. He is cold enough that his chest is warm. One last sob and he tastes the ice in his mouth, on his teeth, under his tongue.
He could lie and lie and eventually lie still. His hope is here in the canyon, bleached through and undone. How it happened he can’t explain, but here it sits and here it stays, until the world wracks to pieces. He comes to his knees. He will not die, not here, he cannot. He is too afraid of what might happen.
Smoke-in-his-Eyes lifts his head. His blood is blue and thick like syrup, needles skewer his legs. He tries to stand and falls once, twice. He tries again and gains his feet. The skull stretches before him, larger than a man, larger than a house, as large as the moon and the mountain itself. Owl’s skull. It fills his sight, but he turns away with a slow and ungainly shuffle. Away from his only hope.
His black oak staff rasps his hand as he levers it against the ground. He cannot change here, the eyes of the owls illumine his back and he would be rent like rotten leaves before his vault into the sky. He is a long time walking out of the canyon. Not once does he turn and look again, the cold savages his face and shoulders.
Stunned he walks, sullen he wavers. His steps hold no rhythm and he slips and falls prone, here on an ice patch under the snow, there on a root curling up from the ground. All the long and lonely way he thinks of the eye, he thinks of the dark and the night and the terrible cloak of those terrible feathers dipped in deepest black. The silence and the dread, they come for him. He is shivering now. He passes out of the canyon, ignoring the new snowfall, and changes. Then there is a raven flying down the mountain into the wood and meadow far below.
