They sat together cross-legged in that whalebelly Dark, peeling at one another like onions. The Light would return to find them each bidding fare thee well
—
And so it was that a younger man left an older to hang from this pale Sky alone; the only shot to speak of fired unconscious and chambered long ago by whatever beast it were that gnawed steady at the youth over great stretches of Time. It was this passing folly and no other that would cost him the Earth














