We’re at sea again, headed back to the motherland. The newly acquired wife is sleeping peacefully somewhere many floors below me. I’m greeting the sun for the first time in quite a while.
Like a march of titans against a powder flame sky, the mountain clouds move in the east, accompanied by tin can salsa music and the Crown’s low rumble. In near suspended motion, the titans move and stumble on themselves, crashing down imperceptably while new cloud gods climb over their backs, reaching for the wispy spirit clouds miles high in the great slate ocean above.
As the earth turns, the largest of these heaps is set ablaze, immediately a pink ember, growing brighter with each breath of balmy ocean air. The ashen shapes outlined in molten lava, moving inward until the mountain of suspended water molecules burns bright with the odor of pleasant fire.
To the west, an enormous continent the color of sheet metal and magma fills the sky and hangs just above the horizon, painted hot by the hastening sun.
The entire eastern procession is now outlined in flame, with beams of fire exploding from the top. Finally, the sun makes its brilliant appearance, with the panache of Midas, turning great heaps of cloud to gold.
