Thousand: Two Hundred Nine

back, shadows touching its curves, flickering over the valley down its center, becomes a new landscape that Samuel sees himself wandering across, a landscape of yielding stone, warm and comforting, where he can explore his solitude. The young man glances over his shoulder, bemused, and Samuel grins sheepishly, as though his every thought were being read already by the young man’s skin. The golden light penetrates the hair at his crown, illumining a circle. Where the hair is thinning? So young and beautiful and balding? The ground becomes hummocky now, which makes it more difficult to hold the other’s hand.