with frail blooms drawing strength from atavistic barks and sacred cliffs – blessing them with breaths as they search thickets and vines for clearings – the wind brushing off leafs and sifting through shadows with the distant perfume of diesel oil.

iii. Then the old man spoke of an ancient god falling from the sky – and the god’s velvet feathers scattering over hardened shapes – the god spending time on earth with men who knew nothing of pure beauty. And in her rage – the god finally rose – and rose with petals of fire falling in the wake of her flight leaving the earth and mortals to remember her forever. Gabriel and Ji-hwan take all this with a grain of salt – Lomonosov graduates. Journalists out here to get something good on the mad veteran in Borneo still haunted by screaming villages burning beneath

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