myth for christmas cactus

You must understand the mountain. It comes from the story of a mother who never dreamed - or rather - she had a single dream and no other. This is the story of the end of the world, when mother stopped dreaming.

Are we breaking apart?

Our imaginations disembodied?

She could feel them in her sleep and blindly create altars and idols instead of looking at them. The mother woke horrified at the grotesque objects in her hands that she had made in the night - out of hair and nails. Out of hide, blood, dirt or flowers. Before anyone else woke, she would throw them in the ocean so she could put them out of her mind - which was a place of storms.

But after many years of this a mountain of the refuse rose out of the sea from all the dreams the mother refused to dream.

Where are her children? She cared for them cooly because she was afraid of them.

They are in the mountain, the people of the mountain, longing to be seen, dropping pebbles as they walk.

***

The fox didn't need words to understand Sweetie, and Sweetie feared that the sound of her own voice would break her heart. Every day walking up the mountain was the same. Sweetie would speak and fire would appear on the ground or the air, wherever she intended, and she would eat without hands while the fox opened the bellies of and ate the eyes squirrels and doves. Sometimes they shared food. Sometimes she could not believe she had given the fireweed her hands. It couldn’t have been a mistake, but she also couldn’t think was else it could be other than a mistake.

One day the fox woke Sweetie with its wet snout. It was so early the sun had not yet rose and the sky was bright with snow. They build a fire around their small shelter, but the fire crackled from the incessant snow. So they rose and started to walk. She let the fox curl around her shoulders while she continued to sing the song of fire, but the fire kept going out. The song only made so much flame. It did not take long before the snow was accumulating up to Sweetie’s knees, and she made her way is short bursts. they was nothing at her eyes but ice and snowflakes that melted down her cheeks. She brushed the ice from her eyes. Until she heard an echoing sound. She could barely see anything, but was certain is was both the most terrifying and beautiful vision she had ever seen.

Below her sheer white rocks dropped, and before her was an infinite expanse of slate grey wiped with snow. Curls of waves wove through the scene, far out. The only thing that kept the girl and the fox on the cliff was the tremendous wind for the snow here was being blown like a river into the forest behind them and pressed into the mountain.

By miracle, Sweetie saw a pink sleigh, apparently abandoned. Sweetie, held the fox in her arms and walked to the pink place without asking permission. Her body was so wet and cold she felt herself to be nothing but bones and a dully beating heart. She did not see before she slept, the line of pebbles leafing the way deep into the forest where shadows were tending a large fire.