atalatus

Once by water grew a boy who lived with his mother. When they laughed, fire sprang from their mouths in a dance that gobbled up all the shadows of the night, and it made them laugh all the more. His mother was immortal, and so she never died. She once said, "If I am ever to leave, do not cry: for I will still be, thousands of me in your supple core, chanting for you to march on, on, on." The boy had no father. One day, the boy awoke startled by a gust of wind that shook the home. When he later saw himself by the water's edge, he was startled again, as his body was covered by leaves, layered like the feathers of a common bird. He ran into th