The seam between sleep and waking was nearly imperceptible, a push and recoil of dim into dark much slower and more irregular than breathing. As paralysis gently precipitated out of his blood, theMaurizio Cosua | Cielo et Terra man arising saw that the luminary vacillations were external to him, that his sight alternately was lost to satin black, and recovered in pearl grey. He rolled to a shoulder, became aware of other sleepers.


The labouring half-light brushed in softly, and, while retreating, animated his residual vision with contrasting, peppery swirls, then invaded once more the retinal after-image with highlights from the horizontal forms of those around him. The other figures reposed prone on a dais, as did he, and showed no subtle stir of life, not the faintest respiration. In the intervals of visual acuity, he could surmise in the distance recumbent shapes beyond counting.

His body creaked like a fossil disinterred, a remnant newly informed with long-forgotten mobility. Why had he awakened, only he? Close to him, a woman lay inert. Her clothing was indistinct; but he could discern some sort of vine entrapping her legs. The low, rectangular supports that served for beds seemed each to conform in size to its supine occupant, whether cradling an infant or propping an ancient.



The light emanated from a source far away in one direction. He began moving toward it each time the eclipse lifted, while not daring to touch those prostrate about him. A mature male slept apparently unaware of a broadsword piercing his chest. A stump was breaking the back of a very old woman bent in an arch. An amorphous beast had sunk its gruesome mouth into someone's side. A cannonball hovered just above one sleeper's throat. Clearly it would descend in time. Although most children and young adults lay untroubled and untouched, the man passed a boy whose flesh was cruelly pressed and cut in a net.


The light's origin was apparent now: a brilliant crack that widened, then extinguished behind a door sighing open Maurizio Cosua | Senza Titoloand banging shut as if swung on hinges. The channel of light flowing past the moving door had pulverised everything it had played upon. He took hold of the door, and realised that were it flung wide, every sleeper exposed to the harsh rays would crumble into dust. He leaned to push the door shut, pressed his hand on the hard surface, and passed through into daylight as if breaking the plane of a pool.


The day baked him in an instant. His body crumpled, condensed small, round, and hard as a Patrick Rocard | Le Rossignoinut. Dry gusts rolled the tiny, shrivelled sphere across the ground. With a squawk and an echo, a lone bird dropped from blank skies to seize the object and fly off. Yet the pithy orb would not crack in a beak. Nor would it shatter when tossed from on high to nether rocks. It had been constructed to resist all, to remain intact until it could germinate in fertile ground, however distant.

 

 

 

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