Eagle Boy

For the briefest of moments, I soared among the clouds, eagle-like. I chanced a glance down, rewarded with the most beautiful vision ever to enter my aquiline eyes. I took in the great edifice, the wondrous castle being built below me. I saw the walls and the parapets made of crystal, the jewel-encrusted roofs, the streets lined with gleaming golden stones. I saw the geometric shapes below, perfect as it approached its telos, and the brilliant vision of what was yet to come blinded me.

Then I remembered that only moments away I would be back on the ground, in the mud and the humidity, struggling to haul the bricks broke by my own hand, straining against ropes with poles, hewing raw rock and carving formless stone. I heard the grunts and the shouts and the cries of misery, I tasted dirt in my mouth and the agony of a purposeless life.

And I plummeted earthward, and woke up.