CHAPTER 2
You part ways with the bounty-hunter Stinking Beetle. "If you are not captured by now, nothing will ever catch you" he says as he gets on his white-maned horse. "A splendor of visage" says the wind and light, capturing the world and striking it bluntly across the pelt of the animal.
You don't think you will ever see him again. But you earnestly believe he will survive.
Perhaps God is the most cruel animal. Toying with mankind by giving the impression of freedom. But you suppose, that without freedom, life and death would never mean anything at all. Death then, is like an animal; it preys on Life, but it never realizes the consequences of it's actions. Only freedom, the power to overcome, sets mankind from the animal. You believe this, and you will believe this, even when faced with the most deadly of foes; the beheading axe of the World. The soft mist will become dull you feel, and it will eat you whole.
But today is not that day. And you are not sure whether you will enjoy it. Will it be a day of peace? of anguish? will you even be able to distinguish?
Will then, you feel, and you believe, is an animal unto itself. Perhaps, a fly. It does whatever it wants and dies. But it always springs up back again, anew.
You catch the soft tunes of the flute. A fat hooded man sings by the sparse road.
You do not greet him. And he doesn't either.
"Enjoying the view?" he says as you stop near him. "Come, rest a while. Enjoy the singing of the flute."
You shrug and keep going...
"Maybe next time!" he says as you leave.
You jump over the creek and land soflty unto mud. A house lights the way of the road due to the glow of the yellow windows.
A sign. "Muddy's Inn"
Drawn below it is a crude depiction of a man singing a flute.