Continued, Country People
Many hours I stood at the edge of the cliff and stared down on this new world.
For dozens, no, hundreds of miles, the scene stretched out before me.
Chains of steep, yellow mountains descended from the clouds onto a vast plain of meadow and forest, like our meadows and forests, but in the colors of the Inner World: yellow and pink and silver.
The wind rustled through the trees, and from the heights, I saw cataracts of lava.
Great birds with heads of giant lizards circled.
Herds of wild animals gathered in the valleys of the golden rivers, all so bright, so bright, my eyes ached, although I couldn’t turn away.
And in the center of this all: the Palace.
For never in my dreams could I have conceived a creation of such beauty.
It seemed as if it were an extension of the land itself, rising in great terraced stages, with gleaming rooftops and colonnades in infinite repetition, each of which would have been the envy of Rome or Athens, and yet here were but a tiny part of the great golden city, its spires reaching into the sky like spears.
How could I have known at the time of whom I’d find there, of the people—our ancestors!
—who had long left our corrupt, terrestrial world for this more perfect one; of the lost animals who soared in the skies and swam in the golden waters; of the beauty of those men and women who lived without want, in harmony with one another and with the land; of the kindness with which they would welcome me to their bosom; and of that kindred Klebian soul who long had awaited me.
O Gabalor, O Gabalor!