The massive, red trunks of Giants darted past her eyes until she passed beyond the grove into the open canyon, the star-dome not far above. The conical heads of the Giants stood out among the tall pines in the bright starlight. She crossed into mid-canyon. A great hump arose where the canyon forked.
As she reached the summit of the hump, a plateau of snow-crowned pines suddenly spread out before her. She flew higher still, until she found herself within the star-dome itself. She soared over a landscape draped in drifting smoke and blanketed in snow, the alarm in her mind as strangely distant as the pines of the plateau below. The black wings above her were still, giant feathers lightly flicking here and there on the wind, afloat upon their sea of atmosphere. Her fingers and face numbed into comfortable burning, and she spent a moment with her eyes closed, feeling her body suspended on emptiness.
Death Valley Alpenglow
She hung below the great wings, far above the Range, as the plateau ascended slowly into the east. A group of multicolored peaks approached, breaking through the ice here and there. More colored peaks broke the northeast horizon, and in the east, a Great Wall of white granite and ice, and the white glow of the moon just beyond. As she soared to the southern flanks of the colored peaks, she passed over a divide, and the forested land dropped off below her. She passed two great pyramids to her left as the land below her grew deep and rugged. She looked up into the shoulder of a greater divide, cloaked in snow and rock. The wings pushed the air down over and over, lifting her over the forested slopes, and finally up the rocky face of the divide as she watched the east suddenly break over the summit. It glowed with moonlight. The moon burned there, breaking out of the jagged granite horizon.
As she turned her startled eyes downward from the blinding moon, she watched the show-choked forests descend into a long, broad, river of ice; or a canal, rather—it was too linear to be a river. Then silently, effortlessly, she crossed the air above the canal and began her ascent toward the foot of the Great Wall, and once there, the great wings pressed and pressed skyward along the shadowed granite face. She spiraled upward along an invisible helix, the moonlit lands to the west falling away, far beneath her dangling feet. Suddenly she could see the eastern desert break like the moonrise over the top of the wall, as the land broke off at a knife-edge, falling away deep through the cold desert air. She looked miles down into the deep moat that lined the Great Wall. There was a large, lung-shaped lake at the bottom of the moat, with a river flowing in from the north. The river flowed out to the south, flowing down the length of the moat as far as she could see.
Her great wings locked into full extension; black sails braced upon the desert updrafts, slowly circling upward, then downward and southward, as her wingëd undertaker drifted high above the great moat.
After some time passed, if any passed at all, the moat flowed into another great lake, the chain turned eastward from the icy range, and Cindy followed. As she slowly descended and came nearer the land and water, great legendary beasts came into view: camels, mammoths, and big cats. On she soared, exhilarated, still high above them all, through a pass over a little stream, over more creatures of times bygone. A great, long lake appeared, coming nearer and larger until she flew just above the surface. By the near shore she saw a fallen horse. A band of men and dogs had gathered around it. Several men were butchering the beast while two tended fire.
The talons released her. She plunged into the lake.
Stunned and limp, she sank. Suddenly aware of her predicament, she began struggling to free herself—to swim, to stop the sinking, to stop the sudden burning in her lungs.
But there was something beyond the panic. She stopped to listen, and to look. She sensed a sudden peacefulness, but it seemed to be deeper. She looked out into the water, and exhaled; the boiling bubbles flew upward as she sank deeper into the sea, and she felt the depth embrace her. The moon rippled through the water, and its white fire shot through the water into her eyes. She felt the bottom touch her and hold her down, and just as her lungs were about to let the lake flow in, the lake water became a rain shower. She heard thunder.