Morning -- on becoming birds and meeting cougars

After doing Tai Chi, the boy settled in on the large chipped gravel helipad at the edge of the butte which had become his ceremonial ground.

He sat, relaxed, pulled his sacrum ("sits down bones") into order, and breathed in earth and heaven, breathed out glowing manifestation. His eyes relaxed on a small bunch of Bear Grass before him, and the Oscillation began.

As fast as the flickering of a fluorescent bulb, his eyes caught two realities. One a fuzzy -- unfocused bed of rock. The other, a lightwire matrix -- criss-crossed with infinite symmetry -- a holographic net holding together all that was. The nanosecond his brain registered this new view of reality, it shut it off. By virtue of his (relatively) calm mind, the vision instantly turned back on after the resistance lifted. Thus, the flickering. Almost too fast to be registered except in hindsight.

The flickering gave everything a translucent quality, and began itself to oscillate. The screen of the viewed reality slowly lifted and fell in with the oscillation rhythmically, as though breathing.

The back was screaming in pain -- having spent the majority of its life maladjusted by incorrect posture -- habitual defensiveness against the world.

He lay down slowly on the rocks, laying his hands to either side, slightly crooked, as though a bird were unconscious, prone, and on its back.

The image struck him, this posture, so birdlike. Birds filled his mind briefly, and a vulture fell from his interior's sky and became him. Then, supine as he was, wings cocked as his arms were, an unidentified hawk. Many raptors fell lightly into his body, becoming him. His chest began to rise with muscle -- loose and strong. A breastbone formed under the hump of his chest to support it. His breast was beautifully feathered with a dun-ivory plumage, specked with dark brown. His face became angular, his forehead low. Eyes large. A beak.

Flipping over on his side, and up onto his talons, he noticed how wings weren't used when siting up. He hopped to the edge of the butte and looked out over the conifer-covered ridgelines below. The beating of a helicopter percussed his insides, even at a great distance. He was warmer than he had ever been, and the wind didn't touch him -- only registering on his breast and neck feathers with a slight ruffling.

He flew. Only a short semi-circle out from the butte -- he felt huge in the sky, he felt how large he was and the butte getting away from him, and he pintailed in the sky and came back.

Stumbling on the gravel, he fell down and shook to -- on his back again. He resumed breathing and laid back down.

A cougar easily loped up over the side of the butte, liquid in the ease of his movements and preternaturally beautiful. It walked, transparent, over to the boy's face from the East, and licked it with a large rough tongue; ethereal, and walked on.

Breathing a hard breath, he rolled over on his side, and sat up slowly. He stood up. He looked around, walked in the Presence, on the benevolence of the Earth softly, picked up his portable radio in its ripstop yellow case, and walked back to the tower.