“There’s an updraft, let’s take it.”
“Up and down it goes, breezes like stones, fire, and infinite cold, until it stops. Then, it might not.”
“Hmmm, yes, yes, but we really should get to the meadow in the next valley, our belly begins to feel the journey behind. We must keep up our strength if we are to succeed and reach the pupil. The path is of great importance.”
“One sucks seeds from cone or ground, they sprout either way. Stretching seams, devouring light, bursting forth from a rotten core. Mulch, all just mulch, then something other all-over again.”
“Well, I for one would like to see some progress right now, so could we stop with the koans and eat? This nihilism of yours begins to chip my beak.”
“I for two see without effort, even if blinded by time.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
They reached the meadow and dined on the creatures of the ground, wiggling, juicy, and thoughtless, each enjoying the snap and grime. They drank from a stream, both taking their turn to breathe and gulp, breathe and gulp, and then rested their wings in the heat of the day, waiting for strength to seep back into them.
“The pupil will be glad to see us; we found him a way.”
“A helping hand for a drowning man is no hand at all. It is a hook, a branch, a nook, a solid, frigid rock. Otherwise, you might surmise, Death had a bacchanal.”
“He is young and a bit clumsy, that is true, but aren’t they all when we meet?”
“Flautless path carver digs ditches in the middle of a road.”
“And he did pass through our gate, that’s a sign on its own.”
They took flight once more, circling up from thermal to thermal, until they rose over the mountain range. The air was cold and gusty, poor with nourishment.
A storm had caught up to them. It forced them low, near the mountain walls. Dry thunder struck all around. There was snow and rock in the air, but four eyes are better than two, and they weaved through the boulders and drops until the danger was left behind.
When the lake valley opened up before them, it was all sunshine and roiling grass. Their final glide ended in the middle of the lake, where they plunged into its depths, in search of a boy herder, somewhere there, in the dark, past the dissolving gate.