Chapter 6
Even Colin had to admit, St. Nectan’s was worth the walk. They paid an entry fee at a tiny hermitage and then descended through
a winding tunnel of greenery. A series of slick stepping stones led across pools of water to the secluded waterfall. The cold
tumble of water spouted down between colossal walls of moss-fuzzed granite. The air smelled deliciously of new-forged steel.
Arthur stood next to him on a stone shelf at the bottom of the gorge, the waterfall booming down before them. Colin bowed
his head over the screen, clicking through the pictures, considering the blurred misty light, the foaming cascade of water.
Any one of them would be a lovely wallpaper for his computer desktop.
“I’ll send them to your email,” Colin promised. “As soon as I get a cell connection.”
“No need,” Arthur said. “I was here. I saw it.”
Colin nodded. As they were walking back, it crossed Colin’s mind that he had forgotten to look himself, had only seen the waterfall through the image on his phone’s screen.
But then, he reflected, it was more interesting on the screen.
The light on his Ericsson was brighter and sharper than the light of the natural world—much like peering through the Surrealist’s Glass, reality became more vivid and interesting viewed through the intermediary of the cell phone.
Also, for Arthur, the moment was already over; but for Colin, the moment was now his forever.
Captured like one of his grandfather’s butterflies, held to the velvet by a silver pin and lovingly embalmed.
It did not matter a butterfly had to be dead to be kept that way.
In a sense, when they were preserved and mounted and displayed behind glass, they had really been made eternal.
Life was no way to live. It was always over far too soon.