The reverend was hiking east along the highway, into the sunrise. The morning was dewy and cold. A hot day was coming. He was ten miles from the last town and twenty from the next, and for those thirty miles he knew he would be alone. It would take him most of the day to walk them.

He was revolving the world as he walked, drawing the shapes of continents and countries in his mind, colouring them one shade or another to the rhythm of his movement. It was a game he played with himself, with the universe, in the days and the hours between the gardens of children, the sermons, the abrupt endings. He raised kingdoms from the ocean, lifted their strange architecture from the weeds and the krackens, and in this manner passed the hours until noon.

Cars and trucks tore past him, their occupants turning surprised faces to watch the tatterdemalian figure struggling on the shoulder of the road. He paid them in his fancy, invested them with his wishes, until the road glimmered and shone in the heat and he had to rest. He curled up between a ditch and the rabbit-proof fence that ran parallel to the road, and slept sacral through the heat of the day.