branch and swung us high into a tree,
with no aim save the wonder of learning the strength of our body. The
branch snapped under us and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a
cushion. Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on the
moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face. And we heard
suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there
were no power left in us save laughter.

Then we took our glass box, and we went into the forest. We went on,
cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through
a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising
around us, and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops. The
trees parted before us, calling us forward. The forest seemed to welcome
us. We went on, without thought, without care, with nothing to feel save
the song of our body.

We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree branches, and
flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone and we sent it as an
arrow at a bird. It fell before us. We made a fire, we cooked the bird,
and we ate it, and no meal had ever tasted better to us. And we thought
suddenly that there was a great satisfaction to be found in the food
which we need and obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry
again and soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in
eating.

Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak of
glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water but only a
cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down, upturned, and the sky at
the bottom. We knelt by the stream and we bent down to drink. And then
we stopped. For, upon the blue of the sky below us, we saw our own face
for the first time.

We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body were
beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt
no pity when we looked upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our
brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong. And
we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the
stream, and that we had nothing to fear from this being.

We walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered among the
trees, we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where we shall sleep
tonight. And suddenly, for the first time this day, we remembered that
we are the Damned. We remembered it, and we laughed.

We are writing this on