“You served overseas, didn’t you, Mr. Ricketts?”

​

“Sure did. Two tours. We was drafted right out of high school, me and my brother.”

 

“You served together?”

​

“Mostly. He was discharged.”

​

“Honorably?” 

​

He chuckled. “Not quite.” 

​

She matched his laugh, but her face quickly dropped. “Regardless, I just don't believe anybody wants to die in a jungle; fighting like that.”

​

“All due respect Miss—I don’t think nobody wanna die fighting.”

​

 She eased back in her chair. Took a sip of her wine. 

​

“Did you know this used to be a castle?” They were sitting in the dining hall of her great stone homestead, atop an apex overlooking a sea of hills. Grapes and olives grow down the way. Below them barrels of wine aged. “Centuries ago, when Florence and Siena were at war, this was a stronghold. Where we sit now, archers kept watch for mobilizing armies.”

 

“Here? It’s an easier shot from the roof.”

 

“The upper floors were an addition.”

 

He grunted with understanding, slouching in his chair. He reached for his glass, swirling the wine, his fingers clasped around the stem. “Which side was they on?”

 

“What do you mean, Mr. Ricketts?”

 

He took a drink. “Soldiers here, I mean. Florence or Siena?” 

 

“I’m not sure. They fought for the same God.”

​

--------- < > ---------

 

 

    

She called a few weeks ago about a job.

 

“Mr. Ricketts,” she called through phone static. Her name was Giulia—she was Italian.

​

“Call me Jonah. Or Joe. Out here folk just call me Joe.” He’d just taken a rocks glass out of the cupboard, planning to laze the evening away when the phone rang. Took him a moment to pick up. No one had called in a while.

 

“I’ve read about you. The man without pause.”

​

“I never much liked that article. That headline just means I don’t hesitate. Any regular dolt would think twice.” 

​

“That’s why I need you, Mr. Ricketts.”

​

He waited for her to continue. 

​

“Mr. Ricketts? You still hunt, no?”

​

He didn’t answer right away. He hadn’t taken a job since ‘88. His eyes drifted to the photo of his family set on his desk. His arms spread out on their fence, his son Adam on his shoulders. The hills on the horizon, the golden sun filtering through their stray hairs. Beth, laughing at something his brother, Albert, had said from behind the camera. Would’ve been taken just a few months before everything went down.

​

When he did answer, it came out as a mumble.

​

“At first, I thought nothing of it,” Giulia continued. “When you buy a vineyard, you sign up for pests—deer in the spring, bugs in the summer—but this is different.” 

​

Jonah walked the handset to his home bar, where his grimy hands opened the bottle of whiskey, receiver nestled between his ear and shoulder. “You got a deer problem? Miss…” he trailed off, realizing she hadn’t introduced herself. To be fair, he didn’t get the chance to introduce himself either.  

​

“Fontana.”

​

“Miss Fontana. You want me to fly across the sea to hunt some deer?”

​

“No, Mr. Ricketts—a boar.”

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

    When he arrived in Italy, Giulia didn’t put him to work, not at first. She met him at the gate, the only opening in a wire fence that stretched miles around the property.  He thought she sounded taller on the phone. 

​

She was a wiry fifty-something, egg-blond kissing the ends of her gray hair. She apologized as she dragged the fence open wide enough for him to get the car he’d rented through, directing him to park under some nearby trees. He opened the door, stretching his massive arms to the sky.

​

“You won’t need that here,” Giulia said, pointing to his car. “You can walk anywhere on the grounds.”

​

“Quite a fence you got there,” Jonah said, ignoring her. From here, he couldn’t make out an end to it. They were midway up the hill, and the fence disappeared around the curve to keep going for who knows how far. It didn’t seem that anybody else was working the land. 

​

“We have to keep the grounds enclosed—it keeps out the animals,” she said. 

“I don’t mean no offense, Miss, but any deer worth its salt clears that fence easy.” Jonah spoke with his hands, tawny hair peeking from under his rolled sleeves. He wore a cattleman hat and a scrappy shirt tucked into a pair of grubby work jeans. His boots clicked as he walked—like a cowboy in spurs. 

​

In the backseat of the car, tucked inside his rucksack were the disassembled pieces to a Remington 700 hunting rifle. 

​

He wasn’t allowed to own a gun. The FBI made sure he knew that when Albert confessed. But living out west, it was folly on their part to think Jonah couldn’t rustle up a firearm. After all, he lived off his land and he was never good with a bow. Not two days after he was released he visited one of his brother’s good ol’ boys. He needed a pistol, a rifle too. He’d lost his own during the raid. 

​

He slung the sack over his shoulder with a grace Giulia wouldn’t have pegged him to have. She gestured toward the homestead atop the hill. 

​

“Do you drink, Mr. Ricketts?” 

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

An hour later, Giulia led Jonah to a dining table in the wine cellar. She left to prepare a tasting for the two of them, leaving Jonah looming over the parts to his rifle, meticulously reconstructing the thing. He held a bullet in his hand, using it to screw the parts back into place. He’d done this hundreds of times; after what went down in Vietnam he took great care with his routine, configuring the parts with religious attention.  

​

He’d just slotted the action into the barrel when Giulia returned, placing two empty glasses on the table before him and another for her. He watched as she set the dining table with two placemats, a basket of bread, and a few bottles of wine. Also on the table she placed a bundle of dried herbs he didn’t recognize.

​

Jonah found himself called to what looked almost like daisy pistils. It was almost like yarrow, only these flowers were a drab yellow. Even dried, its bulbed flowers held this color, a sickly ochre stark against the dining table’s wood. Giulia caught his gaze.

​

“Beautiful, isn’t it? 

​

“Ain’t seen nothin like it before.”

​

“You wouldn’t have, not in America, anyway. This only grows this side of the Adriatic: the immortelle flower,” she said, gingerly offering him the bundle. “Many here call it elicrisus.”

​

“What’s it for?” 

​

“We craft our wine with it. Some believe it gives one longevity—everlasting life.”

​

“Do you believe that?” 

​

She flashed a waggish smile. “I think it smells nice.” 

​

She lifted one of the many bottles from the table and displayed it, resting in the crook of her index finger. 

​

“This is our white, a house favorite. We only bottle two thousand every harvest.” She delicately took a wine key from her pocket and began working on the label. Soon she poured two glasses. “We like to begin our tastings with whites; they prime your palate for the darker samples later.”

​

He cringed at the mention. Often he punctuated his summer nights with too many sips of whiskey and Beth would pour herself a delicate glass of pinot grigio; he always hated the stuff. He took a tentative sip, the wine harsh like vinegar: thin, soupy, viscous—like wearing a fur coat in the summer. 

​

“No, Mr. Ricketts—smell first,” Giulia said, extending her hand to lower the glass from his lips. His face burned, fearing he’d raised a disappointment in her, that he had ruined a tried-and-true process she’d spent years honing; guiding someone through their own senses. He met her eye. She beamed, creasing the wrinkles in her smile lines.

​

“Happen often?” he said, attempting to make light of his faux-pas. She shook her head. 

​

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Watch.” Lifting her own glass with latticed fingers, she dipped her nose into the bowl. After resurfacing, she swirled the liquid in the glass, its residue staining the walls before sinking back below the surface. He did the same, allowing the scent to take his senses elsewhere. Once he’d finished, she asked him to drink again. 

​

The texture was the same, but the notes were lighter—like biting into an apple.

​

He must’ve worn the change in his face, because Giulia smiled a toothy grin before taking another sip herself. He finished his glass.

​

“Mr. Ricketts, slow down!” she jested. There were still many bottles on the table. She began opening one of the reds. “We still have the whole night ahead of us.”

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

He’d never cared for wine. He grew up on the range, taking what he could get. Back in Bugger Hollow, that was moonshine brewed up in a basement by some half-blind man your brother knew. Jonah started drinking young, much younger than a man probably should. He thought about it often—Al probably gave him his first drink. 

​

“Earlier you asked if I drank,” he said, after they’d finished the second bottle. He liked this one better, the red. She’d been rattling off facts about “tannins” and whether or not the wine had “legs,” but he was just trying to enjoy his drink. “I do drink. Probably too much. Been trying to ease up.”

​

“Discipline is difficult, Mr. Ricketts. The ascetics knew it, the Catholics knew it.”

​

“You can say that again, Miss.” He eased back in his chair, and the silence prompted an honesty in him. “I was drinking when you first called. Not quite as good as this though,” he said, lifting his empty glass. He hoped she knew he appreciated it. He wasn’t used to being given anything. Ever since he was a kid he’d been fighting for his own. “I’m a whiskey man, in truth. My wife—”

​

He paused. Felt that pang in his shoulder. 

​

He saw Beth, yelling at the grubby, mangy drunk lazing in her armchair, a day’s sweat dried on his skin, dirt in his wrinkles, shedding into her upholstery.

​

And Adam—sweet Adam, asleep in her arms. 

​

“Are you a religious man, Mr. Ricketts?” 

​

He snapped back. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He shook his head.“Sure’d like to be. But I’m not sure the big guy’s got any place for me."

​

“When I was a girl, I wanted to be a nun.” Giulia laughed, and her laugh let him chuckle.

​

“In many ways, I guess I am,” she said, gesturing to the walls of barrels surrounding them. “This is my nunnery.”

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

It wasn’t long after that he met the hog. Next morning he woke at sunup to stalk the grounds, desperate to earn his keep. He pushed open the grand doors of Giuila’s homestead, out down the stony path that led to the vineyard, taking in the spring air and the eastward sun.  

​

The vineyard was enormous. Rows of trellised grapevines and olive trees dotted the hills, the painted backdrop of the mountains hazy in the distance. He kept walking the path, keeping the fence on his right shoulder: his guide. 

​

Soon enough, he found a splintered hole in the chainlink, tucked behind some trees just off the path. Based on the size, he figured this boar must be massive, bigger than any hog he’d killed back home. The metal had split into individual coils and one of the wooden posts was knocked a few feet away. 

​

He picked it up and quickly found the spot in the earth where it belonged. Carefully, he began threading the chainlink back together, bit-by-bit. Snagged on the wire was a clump of coarse, mangy fur. 

​

It took him about an hour. It wasn’t perfect but he nearly reconstructed the fence. If the thing was as big as he guessed, it wouldn’t make it back through here. 

He was trapped with it now. 

​

As if witness to his handiwork, dark eyes glinted through the brush. He just saw its head at first. Its eyes, blind and milky, its fur, matted and rough. It turned in the treeline, and Jonah  saw its massive body—it was the size of two of him, easy. Some gargantuan thing, stalking him from behind a grapevine a few hundred feet away.

​

When it turned, it lacked awareness of how enormous its tusks were; from here he could see how it struggled to maneuver along the terrace.  

​

He fumbled with his rifle that he’d put together last night after Giulia had gone to bed. Through the scope, Jonah met its gaze. And for a while, they just looked at each other from across the hill, across the vines, across the world. It seemed that even from here, they both knew they needed to die. 

​

Before his shaky hands could pull the trigger, the boar’s head ducked below the surface of the hill.

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

“Why’s it called that if it’s not a funny story?”

​

Later, Giulia and him shared a bottle in the wine cellar. He’d spent the afternoon setting traps around the vineyard and hoping it wouldn’t catch his scent. He knew he was a fool—it probably had by now. 

​

Now the sun was sinking and Giulia wanted to drink; her vineyard also produced a rosy gin, and she wanted Jonah to try it.  

​

“La Divina Commedia. He writes of hell from a lens of divine retribution. Those who sinned in life are justly punished in death.” 

​

He shook his head. “You’re too smart for me, Sister.”

​

“Why don’t we examine it this way, then—why do you drink, Mr. Ricketts?”

​

The man without pause. What a joke. 

​

“I’ve lived a bad life, sister.” he stammered.  “Comes with the gig, I guess. If what that feller had to say is true, then I’m getting shot the second I turn up there.” 

​

“Not necessarily—Dante also wrote of a Purgatory.” 

​

“Is that any place for a fighter? A killer?” 

​

“I don’t think God frowns upon hunters, Mr. Ricketts. Man was created to steward nature, maintain its balance. Is that not what you do?” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Everything I’ve read about you, the jobs you take, you police overpopulated species, no?” 

​

He shook her off, bowing his head. “How much have you read about me, Sister?”

​

He looked up from his hands to meet her eye. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eye was stuck on the bundle of elicrisus on the table. 

​

“I’ve been lying to you, Jonah.”

​

It’d been a while since anyone had called him that. Albert and Beth were really the only folks who didn’t call him Joe. 

​

“So you do know what happened out in Bugger Hollow.” 

​

She wiped a tear and nodded. 

​

“Hell, I knew you knew. It was in all the papers. Wouldn’t be surprised if you caught wind of what went down, even out here.” 

​

“I’m sorry, Jonah. I’m so sorry. That poor boy—” she choked back a sob, wiping her eyes. Jonah didn’t move. He stayed bent over in his chair, brawly elbows resting on his knees. He picked up the bottle of gin and poured two shots. He offered one to Giulia. A silent toast. Into the air, on the table, down the hatch.

​

“I was a father once. Guess you stop being one when your kid dies,” he said, wiping ginspit from his lips. He hadn’t even realized what he said. He couldn’t look Giulia in the eye. “He was a smart lil’ bugger too. Just like his mama. Temper like me… like my brother.”

​

Still, she didn’t speak.  

​

“Truth is, Sister, I drink because I like it too much not to. Must be God’s will.”

​

They both stewed in what Jonah said for a while, both looking at the yellow flowers, both daring the other to speak, move, do anything. For a moment, neither of them breathed. 

​

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, Mr. Ricketts,” Giulia finally said, picking up the bottle of wine. “It's that you can’t outrun God.” She poured the rest into Jonah’s glass. He drank.

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

My brother has a nasty scar across his right cheek. Picked it up on his second tour when his standard-issue exploded in his hands. He didn’t cut his beard for a long time after that. 

​

Sometime you can see it poking up at his eye. We didn’t much like talking about our army days. We was still young men when we got back, had whole lives that needed living. It wadn’t long after that I bought my land, started working for hire. Al and I started hunting together out west. 

​

That was the time of my life. Before Beth, before Adam. We was out there all alone, me and Al. We didn’t even speak to each other most the time. Didn’t need to. I knew he was up ahead, carrying the fire. By the time I’d get there he’d have camp set up. Then we’d switch and I’d carry for him, following the sun. We went on for months like that—tracking coyotes and bobcats down the range. 

​

We let our hair grow. We wouldn't see another man for weeks at a time. One job down, onto the next farmer or cattle rancher who needed something killed. Ricketts boys weren’t good for much else but killin. 

​

He was drafted pretty soon after the fightin broke out. I enlisted. Lied about my age. Didn’t want my big brother out there all alone.

​

We was just kids then. Figured if he was gonna go down fightin, I best be fightin with him. 

​

In the end, we did. 

​

My brother Albert moved all over around the time I got hitched. I wouldn’t hear from him months at a time. And if I did, he was asking for money. He’d always tell me how good he was doing, catching rides across the country, working odd jobs to drudges. When Adam was born, he called and told me he was fixin’ to come into some money. I knew he was lying and pitifully asked if he needed a place to stay. I couldn’t stomach the thought of my brother out there, all alone. He refused until Adam was five. 

​

And then there he was on my doorstep, raggedy as all hell—my brother, the cowboy. 

​

Beth never protested, but I could tell I was already too much for her to handle. Especially with that boy around. She didn’t want him ending up like us. 

​

The next five years carried on. Al never moved out, but he kept himself busy. Met all the folks I knew in town, got himself a job at the hardware shop. Got mixed up with some bad folks, though. Loonies, putting ideas in his head. Just before everything went down, Al got bad. And I mean real bad. Started coming late, that crazy look in the corner of his eyes. Talkin’ nonsense about the government, and how they was coming to get us. Men following his car, planting listening devices in our cupboards. I wish like hell he’d been wrong about that. 

​

See, Al had a drinking problem. And when he drank, he had a gambling problem. And you don’t wanna tussle with the folks that play blackjack out in Bugger Hollow. He ended up losing real bad one night and fell in with them bad white folk who think that other folks is lesser. To get even, he started selling them fools some guns and as any hunter’ll tell you, sawing the barrel off a shotgun is a third-degree felony. 

​

The night everything went down, I was blind-drunk. Everything Al’d been paranoid about had been true. He had an early meeting in town that day to sell an illegal rifle to one “Joe Poore.” Joe Poore’s real name was Tom Franklin, FBI. Running a sting on them dirty white folk. And my brother was the one who sold him the gun. They waited until the sun came down to come a-knockin. 

​

I was standing on my porch when I heard the first shot ring out. I learned later that bullet killed my dog. 

​

I didn’t know where my boy was, so I tucked a .22 in my jeans and took off. Sometime him and his momma would watch the sunset from the barn. I don’t remember when Al got behind me, but we all ended up in the barn together: me, my brother, my wife, and my son. 

​

I hardly remember how it went down. I know Al killed a guy. I know I got shot in the shoulder. And I know they shot my boy in the hayloft. 

​

When they charged the barn, they took us down fast. Al wouldn’t stop shooting. I guess that’s how I got off; me and Beth I suppose. They didn’t actually have anything on us—the trouble was all Al. 

​

I’d’ve done it different though. If they was gonna take us, bait my brother, shoot my boy—then I should’ve gone down fightin.

​

--------- < > ---------

 

 

 

The path laid before him, leading between two hills. Terraced rows, grapevines wreathed around wire fences, snaked into one another, embracing. Nothing but grapevines. He couldn’t recall how many days he's been on Giulia’s vineyard. He could’ve been hunting the boar for three days or three years. 

​

He followed the sun, sinking over the hills ahead as he trudged west. He’d been tracking the boar since sunup. He hadn’t even seen Giulia that day. He caught the boar’s scent on a ravaged trellis and found some dung in the trees. He’d been walking west since. 

​

The lane before him was empty. The hill dipped down to the left and the trees stood to his right. A few feet into the treeline is the fence: his mythic wayfinder, his guide back to Giulia. He turned around and atop the hill a mile or two off in the distance was the homestead, catching the golden light of the sun. 

​

Giuila had told him that the foundation and the first floor remain as they were in the 11th century. Imagine it; destroying a castle to make a home. 

​

He couldn’t help but to imagine what this place once was—the homestead replaced with a towering castle, archers positioned at the slats in the stone, armies readying to kill their passing brothers in the valleys. Fighting a war for God, a war for nothing.  

​

He didn’t hear the boar when it attacked. It charged him from the trees—the bastard must’ve been hiding by the fence. It knocked the rifle from his hand and the hat from his head, sending his body tumbling into the terrace, legs flipping over themselves. He heard the rifle clatter somewhere into the rows of grapevines as he rolled down, reeling from the blow. He landed on his side.

​

He was up quick, reaching for his pistol, eyes wild, trying to place where the boar was. He couldn’t clear leather before it charged again, knocking him to his back. He felt the air leave his lungs as his head slammed against what must’ve been an olive tree. The gargantuan boar sunk into his chest, pushing out any air that he had left. He reached for his sidearm, slipping it from the holster as the boar took more of his breath, his energy. Its tusks pierced his chest, through his grubby shirt. He cried out. 

​

Up close, its eyes were blacker than before, carrying out the thing’s blind will. Its fur, matted and mangy, was coarse, like straw as he grasped at it, punching and clawing trying to move the beast off. It was no use, it was bigger than him. He closed a finger around the trigger of the gun and fired two rounds: one in the air, a second through the beast’s ear. 

​

It screeched and reared. It swung its head and the meat of his chest slackened as the force dislodged him from his tusks. He hit the ground and the beast’s form silhouetted the sun, standing taller than him, taller than God. Forced to watch, the creature escaped into the brush.

​

His rifle was by his side, discarded in the grass. He picked it up with a second wind, crooking the stock in his armpit. Aiming down the sights, he lagged behind the sounds coming from the bushes. Turning on his heels, he stopped when the noise did. Aim. Shoot. 

​

The pang of the gunshot gave the boar time to charge again. It slammed into Jonah’s chest with such force, lodging its tusks further into his stomach. It lifted him into the air as he tried to pry himself off, feeling the ivory pierce his gut, then his liver. His hands slicked with his own blood, pulling as the boar held him aloft for what felt like minutes. 

​

The boar whipped its head, slinging Jonah into the bushes, slamming his head against a tree. The boar ran at him, this time lodging a tusk in Jonah’s right arm—his shooting hand. His arm whipped around the tree as the boar charged past, its tusk taking Jonah’s arm with it. It snapped. 

​

Overcome with pain so bad it didn’t hurt, Jonah desperately reached for his pistol. He didn’t have time to aim. Shoot. Shoot. 

​

Both missed. The boar, still with its tusk through Jonah’s arm, pulled him away from the tree, startled by the gunshots. Jonah dropped his pistol, reaching for his knife, and hacked at the beast’s tusk as it dragged him through the grasses. Blood pooled at his feet, stained his shirt crimson. His insides were falling out. 

​

Finally the boar broke loose, leaving a hole where Jonah’s elbow was. His forearm slackened. It ran off into the brush, leaving Jonah frail on the ground. He rolled onto his back and touched a gentle finger to his stomach—slick and warm. He couldn’t move his shooting arm. He held his stomach in his hands. The boar would be back soon. He couldn’t take another beating like this. He needed to find his gun. 

​

With the hog gone, he set his back against the tree. He touched where his head struck the trunk: warm and thick. He wiped away the blood and surveyed his chest. He pressed a hand to the wound to stop the spurting blood but it’s no use. His hands were coated in the icy mud of the glutton. 

​

A groan escaped from somewhere deep within him as he got to his feet. Soon enough he recovered his rifle from the brush, and used it as a walking stick to make his way up the uneven ground, back toward the path. He stopped a few times, steadying himself, and breathed. He batted away a stray vine with his hand, revealing the dirt road that runs the length of the vineyard. Left on the trail was his hat. He picked that up, too. 

​

He began to walk again, hobbling toward the setting sun, the direction the boar took off in. With nothing else before him, he couldn’t help but pick a grape from a nearby trellis. It was green, one that would be made into a white wine. He remembered what Giulia said, how limited the Fontana whites are. He tossed the grape into his mouth. She’d understand. 

​

A sound woke him from his stupor—a bush rustled a few hundred yards ahead, just down the hill on the terrace. He veered off the path, following an adjacent trellis, trying to catch a good look at the thing. 

​

There he was—the mangy boar. 

​

He squatted low, pulling the rifle off his shoulder. The hog prodded a trellis with his tusks, just standing there. The trellis, made from the same wood posts as the fence, ripped from the earth and the grapevine fell to the ground. Jonah whistled. 

Even with his left hand, it’s too easy. 

​

Squinting through the scope, he met the boar’s gaze. Their eyes met between what was only a few dozen yards. The remnant of himself was dried on its tusks. 

​

The hog’s feet stamped, his head turned. He charged uphill, galloping toward Jonah, penance in his soulless, blackened eyes, growing ever closer through the scope. Jonah fired a round. The bullet peeled past him. The infernal boar still ran. It must just be yards now. The boar dominates the scope, still running. 

​

Jonah fired another round. 

​

In its eyes, Jonah saw Cerberus devouring the gluttons. Cassius and Judas hung before Satan. The maw of the whale swallowing men whole. Sienans betraying the Florentines and the Florentines betraying the Sienans. Men stuck up to their heads in ice. Brother killing brother on a hill for God.

​

Jonah came to with the hogs head burrowed in his insides, eating him. Its tusks tore at his gut, spilling his liver, his kidneys. His ribcage grew around its maw. He could’ve reached for his gun—but he didn’t. 

​

--------- < > ---------

​

 

 

When I wake up, I can’t do nothin but walk. The boar’s gone. I gotta leave it behind. I go back to the grapevines, the branching paths before me, and I keep west, toward some hill in the distance. I walk and walk and walk but the sun stays in the sky, refusing to abandon me. Still looks like it’s setting.  

​

The path in front of me wreathes around the hill. I start the ascent and begin walking in circles around the thing. At its base, the pathway is wide, enough for two cars to signal one another. I round the bend, and the pathway gets ever thinner as I climb higher and higher. Near the end, I’m forced to press myself to the rocky wall and shimmy along. At least I still got my guts.  

​

On the peak the sun’s red hot, like walking through fire. From here I can see it setting in the west, dipping into the sea in front of me. I didn’t know there was a sea here. It’s just me on the apex, and I can see down into the valleys of the world. I see men riding atop black and white horses in the ridge, heading south. A lion pounces on his prey in the brush, a leopard charges some deer in the valley. A she-wolf stands on the ridge of the world between the sun, the sky, and the sea. Day becomes night and night becomes day, but the sun's still in the sky. 

​

I fall to my knees and feel the dirt in my hands. Dotted among the grasses, adorning branching stems are the yellow flowers Giulia showed me. 

​

So there I stood, everlasting on the very hill of death.