Skin of the Mountains

"Why do the birds obey you while they only answer stupidly to my calls?" he asked. 1

"I can go anywhere I want to with a turn of this ring," I boasted to the group of asinine country men.2

I gave him my satchel and shoes as he asked me, then I shed my clothes as he advised me to do. "Wear this," he said, and he shed his own skin. It fell off in a pile on the soil floor looking like a tablecloth used in my home. When I clothed myself in his skin I no longer smelled like my home or the valley. Instead I became like the men on the mountain. I smelled distinctly foreign. I thanked the man and watched as he dressed himself in my own clothes. He said he would wear them until new skin grew on his back.3

From the mountainside I watched a giant crane fly down beside me and place two of its feathers onto my feet for flight. 4

The mists grew heavy. When I stretched my arm out I could not see past my hand, but it did not matter. When I closed my eyes my feet moved along with the rhythm of the mountain and its soils. Faster and faster I could almost feel myself fly.5