t. & a.

I told you that I would mix up the words, of course I did. Recently I read something that made me terrified of myself. Have you ever seen an angel that looks like a demon or an angel or a demon that looks like an angel or a demon and you cannot really tell between demon and angel? Sometimes words betray me when I try to grasp them. Sometimes my vision of bliss is curling up and becoming nothing; and in dim light the dark glitters. There is something in the thunderclouds but I cannot quite reach them. The people have eaten their gold, the villagers are asleep. Our feet are tired of running, I think we may pause and build an empire.

It was shivering and vexed, the story — the one of how they found us. I have waited a long while to tell you it, but my heart jumps around my chest and does not settle; and I daresay half of my attention might be fixed there, at my irksome heart. I might mix up the words. I might forget all of them. The day was overcast and silvery, and the people were eating gold. You could see it everywhere on them, their tongues were bronzed and glistening, their clothes soaked through with sparkling dust. I was scared of all the shining and I closed my eyes. There is blood somewhere on me right now, mind you, though I do not know where, but it is only a drop or two. Never mind that. I was trying to reach the sky that day — well, if I am honest with you, that is a lie. I was on the ground, crumpled and pathetic, and merely staring at the sky, dreaming of it; can you dream of something if you can see it in front of you? If it surrounds you? If it fulfills both of the afore-mentioned conditions but you cannot touch it? I do not quite remember what we felt we felt when we learnt they were to find us, or if we try to run, or rather, I think we ran, and then somewhere along the way we forgot there was something to run from and

The Case of Kendra