You pluck up your courage...

and decide to follow the noises. You push past the branches to find a slight path. The smoke from the volcano swirls downward in the sky and allows the moon to illuminate the scene. The path has been trod well, giving way on each side to long strands of grass pushed outwards, as if someone had rolled a large ball along the path. As you walk, you realize that the bushes on each side alternate between being full of leaves and empty, like an organic checkered border. As you contemplate this, you become aware that the deep snoring sounds that surrounded you have suddenly stopped. The silence becomes deafening as you stretch your hearing as far as it will go in order to hear anything at all. Your eyes search each corner of the scene straining just as hard to find some evidence of the change.

A shadow at the edge of the path inconceivably beigns to roll towards you, sprouting arms as it does. You hear the gallop of horses as the shadow stretches upright and grows still more arms, and you catch sight of a gleaming tusk in the center of what must be a coiled snake. The snake slides and throbs with a pulse as each side of the shadow sprouts ears that come with the sound of rustling leaves.

"Oh no." You say, and it's heavy head cocks to one side.

"OHNO." It says with a voice that is at once dark and crackling with electricity. "KAZUO OHNO."

One arm slips towards you on the air, a red palm pressing out, and you're strangely calmed at the sight of it. At once, the host of other arms snap out in a radiant circle, like the rays of a sun. The hands on each arm pinch their fingers together, making the shapes of fishes and the arms begin to sway as the hand-fish swim back and forth. They flip and wiggle and chase each other's tails in a wide arc around the fulcrum of the pressed-out palm. The wind runs down the path and you swear that you can hear the pop of bubbles on the surface of a lake, the sounds of deep water fish rising to feed. It's massive head begins to swing right and left, shaking loose it's trunk which slides from the tusk and winds down towards the earth. As each tangle in the trunk comes loose, flowers fall to the ground from it's shadows. The hand-fish begin to flash open in an imperceptible sequence, catching the moonlight and shining it like a mirror. As each hand opens and strobes your vision, you feel the earth tremble as a foot stomps the earth and the volcano flares to your right.

The hands quicken and flash and combine to become birds and yet all this time it seems to you as if the arms have never changed their tempo. The wind raises yet again with each steady beat and the flowers on the ground begin to roll towards you, flipping and twitching in the gusts. Dirt begins to fill the air, pelting your cheeks like shattered glass in a car accident. The tempo of the flashing birds increases and now most everything is white and thin, and as supple as a magnolia leaf.