They gather at last, two mothers and their sons, to huddle beneath the rocks. They gather and introduce the boys to communion. With each other. With the wind-swept mass of spires, crude and thick with lichen. A mother and an angel, the angel a mother, and a pair of nude boys flex their fingers in greeting. One on his knees, the other loses his balance as they gaze through the shadows, unaware of their significance. The rocks. The boys. A future of deserts and locusts and scenes of weeping and death. Fear is in the distant haze; the leaves wilt on the vine and an empty pool opens before them, creates an edge from which to spill. His fingers grip the ledge, her cloak drifts over, and a hand extends to steady the child. Don’t go, it says. Stay put my son. My life. But she looks away, her eyes averted from the fall. In fear. In faith. She holds her hand out blind and senses his trouble through the ether. She fingers the emptiness between them. Knows well that he will go. Knows what he knows not—the dried pool a grave, the shadows two centuries’ laughter.