He saw the three figures through the mists. Pleon, Heteria, Gennedario. He said their names to himself. There was no one else. The three went around a boulder and disappeared around it.

The man scrambled forward silently and skirting around he looked around to the other side.

To his surprise. There was no one there. Something seemed to groan beneath his feet. As if life itself heaved to breathe through the ground. Then all was silent.

He looked around helplessly. He had lost them in the open somehow.

He went back to their footprints in the dust. The dust around the rock was a peculiar white gray. He dug around. There were large pieces below. His fingers seized around something firm.

He drew out a whole dried bone. He did not react. But he knew it was a leg bone. A human leg bone. This did not bother him.

He sat puzzled in the quiet morning hours. Then he traced the footprints again in the dust. Easy to see from the brown dust of the mountain printed neatly in the gray. All three trails ended walking directly into the great rock.

The very last was a heel print. As if the rest of the foot had stepped into the rock itself.


From Heaven They Fell

Chapter 1. That Ruffian Malcolm.

Malcom Delrio was what they called him. His friends called him Mal. And being a man, a lad really, who was a prudent and good fellow. His father loved him, teaching him all the ways and life of labor. His mother smiled upon him: approving of his every gesture as a victor’s triumph. Their neighbors hailed him in the street for no other reason than the joy his simple love lit something new in their own hearts. When the old men sang he would lustily sing along. The aged eyes would light in memory, a fire of hope in the past. When a man needed help he would lend his back and wit until the burden was bearable. With his friends, for he had many, but with those he held dear he would go out and do daring as all young men do.

In the evening he would sit at the gambling tables with his father and his father’s friends drinking, telling stories through thick tales of tobacco smoke. Laughing at the old jokes and each turn of phrase that drinking would create a new mistake to be merry about. And yet bowing their heads in the silent defeat of hard times. But always heading home, head held high, not alone because their spirit, though sodden in beer, was full of the not-alone. And with a full spirit they went tottering home to their wives or mothers like orphans to their foster home.

They would stop at any neighboring hallowing to talk a moment and the women and girls would kiss the young lad. This was the way of things. A small local custom. Not different from many customs from around this world. And if there are other worlds, no doubt, the dangerous element of a body will touch the sensitive part of another in peace without drawing blood. And this is a show of vulnerability of both participants. To show that advantage could be taken, but from here no harm shall come. For is is not with our teeth that we rend our food? Only lightly masked by lips with which we direct our affections.

But where from does custom come?

Custom is a shortcut to clarity. If by calamity, the calamity is celebrated by the survival method. No need to survive again; but to revel in survival is the sharing in a golden gratitude for having passed through it.

But for this method of customary kiss? Because, I imagine, we all must survive love. But when life is slow and affection merely a custom: what then is Love?

The old grow old by knowing that a longing youth will often mistake affection and its caresses. By misidentifying the signs a youth can build the foundation of their life upon a mirage. Marriage can either be the ends or the means of affectionate life; both are vapors unable to hold love. And if it...