Suzanna Cousins was happy, contented, and fulfilled.

She had let her philandering husband drift away upon his sea of false promises and lies untold.

She had given up her pink collar place-holder job and invested her last paycheck in her floral van. She was now the Flower Girl, motoring between the pleasant locations favored by the growers that she dealt with, and the various ‘hotspots,’ where people with taste in life and an appreciation for the finer things might be expected to frequent, such as this quaint farmer’s market in Kingsville.

Her van was pulled in head first toward the grassy common area. Her back doors were open to display her wares, the many potted beauties, all of which she had transplanted with care to the perfect vessel. Before her, as she stood with her back to the display, framed by her floral efforts, she set out a heavy folding table, with an exchange space in the center, flanked by potted azaleas for the busy gardener and roses for the man in dire straits.

George Munson had pulled up to the left and was selling his sweet white corn. Giving her that “If only I were twenty years younger,” look.

To her right was Martha, selling her homemade candles. Martha was a customer as well. She looked over with a smile to Suzanna. Ms. Cousins took the cue, caressed her prize piece between her hands and raised it proudly, “Look Martha, look at my lovely Mandeville vine!”

Her parents had been so disappointed that she had not pursued her doctorate. They did remain distantly support in their own patronizing way. The Mexicans, in their watermelon truck, were momentarily blocking her view of Mister Al’s hand-carved cane display across the way. They had also forgotten to lift the gate in their haste. The truck kept coming, backing up towards her, the heavy steel gate scraping her potted azaleas from the table, bursting the white clay pot that held her prized plant and then striking her below the ribs and driving her back into her dearly considered display.

Here, in the Halls of Night, beneath a gibbous moon, the three ravens named We Who Seek, who perched in the silvery light upon the staff of addition, cawed,

“He Who Knows,

Up from the sacred seep

Comes She Who Sees!

Cast your gaze upon the inky deep.

See her emerge!”

The tired wooden eyes of the idol creaked within their basalt sockets as they regarded the inky deep that lapped about his feet.

The gullet-gorged stork stood sentinel beneath, in the shadow cast by He, where the water lapped at his immobile feet.

From the dark waters from which he himself had emerged ages ago crept a vine of deep green, supporting lighter green shoots leafy with an ache to caress and cling to his carven feet.

The despair-ridden stork gazed down into the vinning seep with sad eyes turned to blue, his heavy lids seemingly dragged down by that sagging gullet of squirming sorrows.

The ravens cawed, “He Who Serves!” and took flight into the dusky, silver-hued reaches of the sky that cloaked The Land that was Night.

As they took flight into the face of the ghostly moon it expanded to a silver orb that swallowed them and then sank beneath the bleak horizon. In its place rose an orange-hued sun, a sphere of life-giving might. When the rays of this orb bathed his basalt side the vines raced to his right, growing so thick at his feet as to turn the seep into a lush carpet of life.

With a disconcerted chortle the stork waddle-stalked over to the remaining seep, that tongue of the deep that yet lapped at his left foot, at the base of the staff of addition, where the ravens occasionally perched.

His right side warmed under the sun, causing the dove on his shoulder to coo up into his hollow ear.

Attracted by the light of the sun the vines raced like mad up and over his seated knees, and down into the bright-lit place. The vine flowered in deep red and bright white wherever the rising sun kissed his stony bulk. The sun was irritating him, where the moon had soothed. He felt evermore like a stone at the mercy of the heavens.

In the bright-lit place the vines intertwined, winding their length’s into a woody mass of trunk-like proportions. Winding ever outward and upward, the vine became a tree, with branches reaching all about, some toward the sun and some toward He.

Eventually, just as the sun reached its high point, and the tormented idol found himself overheating and in intolerable pain, the branches sprouted their leaves, the branches of a tree as massive as He.

These foliated arms raced with life, the dismal seep of the deep turned to sap within her soothing form, as she cast her shadow, a shadow as comforting—but not as smothering—as the deep.

He calmed as his cracking stone cooled and eased his mind. He heard the rustle of the leafy tree, the coo of the dove. He could not understand these pleas of the natural world that had bloomed in his cavernous Hall of Night.

The sad stork then looked up at him wearily and spit out a fish. The fish then, glancing sunlight glinting from its scales, managed to wriggle its way up the idol, struggling like a spawning salmon, to breach the many obstacles in its path, finally making its way to the idol’s ear. The fish then, with its dying breath, gasped, “They The Living, seek counsel from We Who Are Dead.”

The fish then slid to its deathly place, to splash into the inky deep and float there against the base of the great idol, before the sad-eyed stork burdened with a gullet full of woe.

The sun fell like a cold stone out of the sky.

In its place rose a silvery moon, out of which the figures of three ravens, beating wing for the staff of addition, soared. These were the messengers of We Who Seek, come to beat their curious wings.

Beneath, in the seep, sulked He Who Serves, suspicious of We Who Seek, but bound to their will.

Laterally, upon the lush sward that was once a barren heap, swayed She Who Sees, his mate, the mother of his once barren world. Her leaves fluttered of their own accord, rustling the feathers of the dove upon his carven shoulder, and the dove cooed, “She Who Sees says, ‘Before a wind foul the ravens blow.’”

As the ravens set down upon the three points of the staff of addition, the now glassy obsidian eyes of the idol creaked open, the brick-like lids grinding in their massive sockets.

The ravens perched in silence, expectant.

The massive jaw of the idol creaked open, emitting a groaning word, “Why?”

The ravens perched in silence, repentant.

Feeling the soothing breeze of her fluttering leaves, he ground out, “When?”

The ravens took wing, exultant.

As they flew into the face of the moon the very vault of the silvery night thrummed to life, enumerating their place along a narrowly constructed staircase of Time, each step tolling like the beating of a cavernous heart.

The night had a voice, “Twenty-one-seven.”

The Idol called He Who Knows, grew wrathful, and slammed the staff of addition, held in his carven fist, into the seep, took up the sorrowful stork in one massive hand of granite and placed it gently upon the raven perch. He then rested one great elbow upon an ages old knee, and in turn rested his grimacing jaw of stone upon his fist. And there he sat, pondering the vast years, even as He Who Serves waited dumbly, and She Who Sees drank his tears, heedless of the vast years, intent only on bringing forth another sunlit day in The Land that was Night.