Holding knees to chest, Sloan watches a wind emerge from the sky, watches the wind etch its scaly textures across the reflections of sky and clouds, sun and moon … the waters swirl gently in a cove as Sloan brushes the hair from her face. This is what it feels like to sit in the mouth of a mountain whose god is benevolent. In place of wrath is wind in the water. The peaks of the mons come down like a pair of hands cupping this sacred water. The stony rim lined with moss and umber veins and golden streaks among its granite holds a chevroned forest of pines. Clouds tilt overhead as Sloan longs for the child to rise from the lake and walk to her and reveal her truth or absolve her from seeking. The water ripples, the clouds move, the breeze cleans. And Sloan wipes her finger through a stream of tears and finds on the ledge of her finger, in place of briny water, a quicksilver bead of fire. It perches by her nail wobbly but stable, neither solid nor liquid nor gas, precipitously congealed as Sloan rises, and gingerly steps over the crumbled rock, and walks to the banks of the lake and stoops, and turns her finger. “It’s okay, dad.” The mud absorbs her knees, depresses in thick suction of her full weight. “It’s alright, Sloan,” she says, the water covering her hands, hair webbing its gentleness, soft tides anointing her forehead.

​- From Forever Urtth