He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?

He watched him stoke the flames, God's own firedrake. The sparks rushed upward and died in the starless dark. Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like heathen candles.

A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember.

Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and dark and cold beyond anything they'd yet encountered. Cold to crack the stones. To take your life.

His mind was betraying him. Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep.

The boy's candlecolored skin was all but translucent.

To seek out the upright. No fall butpreceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness,counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what?Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars werecommon satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the longday movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yetknow it must.