A few minutes later there was not a rabbit to be seen on the down. The sun sank below Ladle Hill and the autumn stars began to shine in the darkening east - Perseus and Pleiades, Cassiopeia, faint Pisces and the giant square of Pegasus. The wind freshened, and soon myriads of dry beech leaves were filling the ditches and hollows in gusts across the dark miles of open grass. Underground, the story continued.

Edmond lay down a few inches away from me on the blanket and lit a cigarette and closed his eyes and after a minute or two I could feel the heat from his body flowing into mine, and when Piper came over with both hands full of petals and threw them up in the air so they drifted down over us both, Edmond laughed and asked What was that for? And Piper smiled her solemn smile and said For Love.

 

Today I am not yet part of the earth, I'm still a little bit human. I'm not sugar and spice, not barking bones, not cracked on that sidewalk, blue, arms twisted out, bones pounded into dust, part of the city's dead, not now, not yet. I roll my eyes up, away from ground zero, see the nuclear glow of a sky rimmed with black. It's completely cloudless, and my star is not so lonely anymore.