II: The Altar of the Vulture

He dreamt first of the rain, falling in fat drops from grumbling grey skies, falling through treetops and running down leaves to drip in fat drops to the thirsty loam below.  He dreamt of rain, and forgot his troubles, washed away in the cleansing waters from above, lost within the soft rumblings of the dim and glittering clouds.  The sound of the falling rain pattering on the ground, tapping on the leaves, splattering in puddles drowned out his own thoughts. 

For a while he floated in cloudy forgetfulness, his mind diffuse and empty.  He felt he were the rain.  Rain cleansing.  Rain washing.  Rain falling.  Rain flooding.  Storms raced across his mind, scattering lightning and shocking peals of thunder.  Mountains eroded and mudslides rolled into valley bottoms flooded with torrential flow.  Trees hung under the ever-dropping moisture.  He ebbed and flowed, pooled and evaporated.

He, the rain, the storm, the wind, the thunder, the grumbling, weeping clouds.  He raced over the landscape, galloping with the speed of the winds over vast meadows with wild grasses, and over jungle-engulfed mountains.  He swirled to hurricane force over spreading and violent oceans, and battered the shore in primal fury.

He then dreamt of the feathered woman, her plumage glittering as if it were of made of precious jewels in the light of hundreds of flickering candles.  Her colours were strange, and she shimmered with all of the hues of the rainbow, and then some.  She looked at him, imperiously through the mask of a bird-face, and spoke his name.

---

Consciousness was slow to return to him.  It seemed to slowly fill him, spreading warmth through his aching limbs.  His mind felt foggy, and he had a throbbing headache that seemed to radiate all through his body.  When he opened his eyes, the light hurt him, and he felt all crusty, as if he had been sleeping for quite some time.

The silent statue of the obsidian vulture loomed over him, its carved wings spread protectively over the stone altar he lay spread upon.  Golden desert light filtered through the gaps in the intricate figure, mottling across Vasa's skin, already tingling with the warmth of the day. 

With aching limbs he sat up, shielding his eyes from the penetrating desert sun, and squinted at his surroundings.  HE sat on a cool grey stone altar, apparently guarded by a rather large and lifelike black obsidian statue of a vulture with its wings spread and head poised and ready to feed.  Beyond the altar, a ring of standing, dark stones, worn by the trials of time and sand.  Beyond that, empty desert, stretching impossibly far in all directions, covered in a tangled spiders' web of parched cracks and etched with furrows caused by strange, standing boulders.  To and from all horizons, there was only the blue-gold sky, the beating sun, the endless desert, and nothing else.

Nothing else aside from him, and the strange shrine.  No wind ruffled the dry sands of the desert, and no birds flew in the sky.  He was completely alone.

Surveying his possessions, he found he was wearing some dirty clothing covered in crusted-on city grime, his shoes, and all of six dollars and twenty-eight cents worth of money.  He had his cell phone, however there was no reception, and the battery flickered into death after a moment.  He pocketed it, just in case.

In bewilderment, he spent some time sitting atop the altar, under the spread wings of the vulture.  The sun sank into the distant horizon, filling the sky with orange and gold.  He watched strange stars twinkle above him, in constellations completely foreign.  There was no moon, only the glittering diamond stars.  He watched, and waited, and wondered.  He had not become hungry, nor thirsty, nor too hot or cold.

After sitting for a day and a night, at the dawn, realization came to him.

"I'm dead."  The words broke the silence of the desert.  The shadows falling across the features of the stone scavenger seemed to mock him, so he repeated himself.  He repeated himself many times, and each time, it seemed to make more and more sense. 

"I'm dead and this is Hell.  This is Hell and I am damned.  I'm dead.  I was murdered!  And now I'm in Hell!" No reply came to him of course, no wind, no sound, no sudden flashes of understanding.  He cursed the sky and shook his fist in sudden anger, and paced some more. 

Reluctant to leave the safety of the vulture's spreading wings, he waited until the afternoon before he set off on foot across the desert.  He could feel the days heat radiating off of the cracked earth.  He chose the direction of what he figured to be 'North' and walked that direction, figuring it to be as good as any, given the circumstances.