They ran through the gray twilight day, a day during which no flicker of the sun licked the world to give purpose to plant or hope to animal. Other beasts ran too—and none: great, small or many—dared the path of the strange pack of wolves and man, a man jogging under the turned out blood-streaked skin of the most feared of four-legged kind.

Having left Scruffy in the Greyhound Lady’s yard, Posie returned home. Not wanting to worry Mom with the blood he scaled the brick side of the house. What fun that always was. He climbed in through the window and saw her sitting there, tears in her eyes—then she saw his bloody shirt and the torn skin beneath and whimpered, “He said I could never take you to the hospital! This is wrong, wrong!”

He walked over to Mom. Told her the tale of Scruffy and the mean tire-stuck junkyard man, and then went to the mirror, the free standing mirror that The Man in the Gray Suit had brought home for him, and had instructed him in the use of it for healing. “You see Mom, I have my condor mirror. I will be okay!”

He stood before the mirror and peeled off the shirt to reveal his wounds. The Man in the Gray Suit had told him that eventually he would need only stand before The World to derive full healing benefits from his condor dreams. But for now, he trained on the mirror, trained his inside by looking at his outside.

“You see, Mom, the mirror is to condor healing what the punching bag is to boxing. I practice up here as I practice down there. I’m just a kid, so it is so much easier when I can see the wound.”

She was now on the bed behind him, curled up on his gray blanket, the only kind of blanket a special person was supposed to sleep with. He inhaled with his eyes wide open, concentrating on the cuts in the body before him as he soared high over the Grand Canyon.

They emerged from the icy river invigorated, cold water falling away from their vibrant running forms under the starless night, a night dark as ash, through which nor a single sliver of light from the moon reached their eyes. It was there though—and they could feel it—tugging upon the wobbling world to little effect, like a woman pinching the man who takes her.

A second river greeted them with his icy embrace so they bunched up for warmth and plunged across as one many-legged beast. This was a deep strong river and it carried them toward the direction of the next unseen sunrise. But they kept churning their paws until they felt slick mud under their pads and up they went, tearing across a new night-shrouded land. He snarled in his throat, indicating that they were now hunting—hunting this new land—and they salivated, Yes!

He alighted on the shoulders of the powerful man clothed in the flesh of a small boy, and reached down and looked, to see the many hurtful scratches inflicted by the magic talons of the enslavers. He used his great flesh-tearing beak to press together the jagged ends, and, once joined, used the upper curve of its hard outer shell to maintaining the healing pressure. As each and every wound joined and formed into whole flesh he moved on to the next wound.

Eventually, as the light of day dimmed, he had healed the last wound. The standing two-leg was now tired from holding up the weight of his wisdom, so he took wing, wished the two-leg well, and beat a trail up into the sky.

Posie woke to the sound of feet thumping down the stairs, followed by the opening and slamming of the door—attended by a muffled cry. He could then hear Mom crying as she ran in her waddling way down the sidewalk, opened her car door, pulled it shut too hard, and then drove off before the car could even get its oil flowing.

Mom is gone!

What do I do?

What can I do?

Whatever I want—not a grownup in sight!

He blinked the remaining river water from his eyes and saw the broad plain outstretched before them as nothing but a band of lesser darkness beneath the black sky. Forest would come to him through the flaring nostrils that tasted the air. But this air so tasted of ash that his sense was lost. They had run until dry and had no idea if forest, hill or plain loomed ahead—although his two-legged mind said plain; more of the same.

They needed their rest so they joined together in a snuggling huddle as he vowed to them that they would feed soon after dawn, when the world would at least be a dim gray rather than this burnt black. The ash bothered their nostrils so they tucked their snouts beneath one another and left only their ears exposed to warn of what might come in the night. As for what might come with gnashing jaws with the dawn, that was not a concern, for it would be they.