ABOVE THE GREAT DEFILE

The last of our kind to dare the sky above the great defile, she looked out from the high ground as the engines howled below the blazing horizon.

"Like a storm at sea that never troubles the watcher on the shore. Do you see now how distant, how remote this tragedy is? Worry all you will - it'll take an age to cut through all the sinews of the earth out there. Long days will pass through longer seasons before it takes its first uncertain steps in the valley. You'll see. We run in shame from a bloated, listless ruin! In what sense are we beaten? Great empires aren't washed away by the wake of a single violent tide. They fall by feet and inches, the same small measures we've compassed in our own long passage through this great expanse. Conquest is a bitter end but it creeps over hard and desperate yards, even in unbalanced struggles. Those that stand take time to die and those that fly take time to find. This land will shelter and provide long before the sight of arduous and uncommon stones. The fools we are to abandon an unthreatened home.

"Rather watch and live. Live as you always have on undictated terms. Pass over and into the earth leaving others to do the same. Talk long and often of our times here. Yield nothing more. Shame and sorrow have no say in such ends."

A thunderous crack peeled from beyond the valley and black cloud streaked skywards in rolling folds. Running hard for the cover of the forest, I turned to see if she had followed. Holding to the high ground above the great defile as the wind caught and spread the darkness above, she looked up and took a single backward step.