All about me was the land, the presence, which was Eoe: deep, dark, rich,
unillumined now as night came on the sepias, umbers and sienna, slate gray,
teal, charcoal, mauve, deep forest greens, smalt, the grays of bone and
old tree limbs angled over the water or stitching through it. Black. Across
the water ranked trees were black-green. Softly beyond them the rounded
hills rose. Too dark it was to see their rumpled clefts crowded with a
rubble of boulders and tough, stringy trees.
It
was strange to me that I had sought this quiet on the river edge.
But
I was different now.
Standing
alone in Eoe I could feel my difference and was left to it.
Strangely, I lingered in Eoe. I sat at tables and dipped deeply into my
differentness from all and from myself. I lived far within it and did not
seek to depart from it.
This
was another part of me. Inherent, strong, cording fields of me like electrodes
their fields always ever denied, ignored, by me before.
It
was a dangerous part.
I could
be a danger to them, 1 of the biggest dangers they had ever encountered
from a single source. They knew it and feared it, they who had contributed
to my severance. Why had they not killed me or attempted to and have done
with the threat? They might yet mean to try. They could be awaiting their
time, their chance seeded within it, as the choy lizard waits for its juicy
bug.
I watched the last birds circle 1 final time the central current and then
beat their way upriver. Small birds in the trees near me rustled the leaves
as they grouped under them for the night.