A Priest Commands the People to Celebrate a Festival

The gods gathered a thick mist around me making me unperceivable to my pursuers who are hungry and also clever so they see the footprints leading into the mist but not out of it thus they wait while I freeze. As in a cave where I can’t see my hand in front of me I can’t see it here either except the enclosure is of light not dark. What ran off my shoulder wasn’t sweat though it seemed it. I was fearful and chilled as though the sweat served its purpose too well which was to make me cold only I had little need of this making. Perhaps though it was some blessing to be burdened with a thought other than my pursuit. Once there were two seasons only. Now there are separate seasons for each of us who is followed into some grove where we are eventually covered or converted into some other thing, myself for instance into a river which I have always said I would like to be but in making a wish one has to be mindful of its edge. A river doesn’t come from nowhere so was I to be made into the spring too? Better to turn into the fountain where water leaves the hole I’ve made open up in the rock and what happens after that is not my domain. Just where it spills here on this stone some moss also soaks me up and from having been filtered though the diverse set of metals in the interior of earth and then on man’s lip I taste of iron meaning blood so I’m sometimes spit out but when a man has thirst enough or else the taste makes him think of another thing that he likes he swallows me. All this of course only after the concealing mist undoes itself, my pursuers having patience but less than mine which is shaped by fear instead of hunger.