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THE RAVINE
Steep are the walls of the cliffs that define this gash within the mountains, so steep and so high that even before the coming of the storms the light of the sun would reach the dark and stony soil here for but a narrow portion of the day. Even so small an amount of sunlight, of course, no longer reaches into the ravine and the only illumination here is that provided by the thunderbolts that burst out of the swirling winds and clouds of the storm. Strangely, however, the most violent air to be found in the ravine is not that of the shrieking winds with their relentless and dramatic gusting. It is, rather, that strangely dense and placid draft which has settled over the stones beneath which the buried Hunger lies. For while the gusting winds are alive with the violent freedom of the storm, the Dead and Devouring Wind is the living violence of the grave whose terrible stillness reduces the freedom and vigor of life to breathless dust.
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