There can be only one, in the end. The rest, like the cobra used in ritual suicide by ancient Egyptian pharaohs, become nothing more than a serpentine sacrifice. The tangled martyrs of the frenzy.
The bog is a place of contradictions: it distorts and transforms that which enters its depths, yet also preserves it. While the bodies remain largely intact, they emerge from the bogs somewhat distorted—their skins shriveled and tanned.
The engravings are done by scratching the rock, then applying color in order to make silhouettes of moving images, flashing riders on animals we call camels, or dromedaries.
Beneath the lake, we slowly realize a psychic register stranger even than that of “the cellar.”
“As if the sky were beneath the cyclist’s feet and the laws of gravity had fallen asleep,” one says.
The walls drip with angels and heavenly garlands, the columns twist and moan; rigid matter takes on the vitality of flesh, first becoming gilded, and then liquefying in intricate spasms.
This is why, in spite of their distance, the thought of being connected again haunts them. At night, they still ache over the fact that they are not one.
