You emerge from the God-King's personal chambers into the outside void of sky. The second sun is still above you, but the clouds have vanished. The sky is a pale, absolutely dustless, absolutely pure, azure. There are no other obstacles near to crowd the distance out. You stand immeasurably high, where land and
substance draws up to a narrow zenith, remote from all inhabitants, all society, all drought and defect.
Purged.
Below, for a hundred miles in each direction, there are mountains, valleys, plains, islands, seas. The setting sun richens, softens, refines all the colors. There are deep blue eastern shadows and lilac western slopes; pale copper-green valleys, Tanagra-colored earth; the distant sea dreaming, smoky, milky, calm as old blue glass. With a splendid classical simplicity someone has formed in small stones, just beyond the cairn, the letters phi omega light. It was exact. The peak reaches up into a world both literally and metaphorically of light it dosen’t touch the emotions; it is too vast, too inhuman, too serene; and it comes to you like a shock, a delicious intellectual joy marrying and completing the physical one, that the reality of the place is as beautiful, as calm, as ideal, as so many poets have always dreamed it to be.
There is unceasing wind and sunlight and open air; endless blue and white clouds as far as you can see. Before you is a deep, crimson fire that pulses slowly, waxing and waning, like the throbbing of a tremendous heart. The gap between the Citadel where you are and the distant tower is a fantastic ediface of throbbing jeweled fire.
It is beautiful and terrible beyond description— beyond belief! All of jeweled minerals is it made, glittering with crystals whose thousand facets blazes with rhythmic fires. Of every shade of rubescence are these crystalline minerals . . . from the faintest ghost pink of early dawn, through the salmon-pink that glows within certain seashells . . . through red-orange and flaming scarlet . . . dark and sullen crimsons, like congealing blood ... to the deepening purples that lay at the edge of the spectrum of visible light. All of many million gems is this arch of fiery brilliance fashioned, ranging in size from gems as small as sand grains up to crystals of monstrous and abnormal girth, larger than human arms can encompass.
And the same gemlike fires that flicker in each single stone pulse to the same throbbing rhythm!
You stare in silence, drinking in the wonder of the bridge of beauty . . . And your mind wanders back to the old myths of Earth, to the Bifrost Bridge that spans the dizzy gap between the worlds of Men and of the godlike Aesir, the rainbow bridge of Norse epic and myth . . . and you think of shining Serat, the sword-slender bridge of gleaming metal Allah flung across the gulf of Hell, and whereover the spirits of the dead must pass to attain to the blissful gardens of Mohammed's paradise...
We tested the blazing thing for strength, and it was solid beneath our feet. So we ventured forth upon the glittering arch. Underfoot, we trod gemmy fires that might have adorned the splendid crowns of czars and sultans. We went on, inching our way across the brilliant curve of puis-ing light, and every hue in the red segment of the spectrum flashed beneath our feet,
from the hard scarlet of Chinese lacquer to the royal crimson that burns in the cloaks of emperors to the rich, deep, Tyrian purple that only the immortal caesars of Rome might wear.
Beneath us, the glittering mass of jewels blossomed with incredible splendors of every ruby shade . . . rose and coral, the elusive orange flame that glimmers within the opal . . . ruby and garnet and the delicate pink blush that stains the rare fire pearl. It was a dream of gorgeous fable we trod, that soaring arch of brilliant fire that spanned the gloom-drowned abyss . . . and at its end we found an even greater wonder.
She seems to glide into the room as though her feet barely touch the ground. Her movements are so fluid and full of grace that she would shame any ballet dancer. The dancer's image is enhanced by the bright yellow tights and electric-green leotard she wears. This is covered by an open smock that hangs halfway to her knees. The leotard's silky fabric encloses her body so tightly that you can see for an instant that she wears nothing beneath it. In the blink of an eye, you take in the perfection of her body. Full breasts almost burst from the green top, aureoles and nipples swollen and fully defined. Her waist is tiny, accentuated by the flare of her hips. You can even see the suggestion of parted lips of her vagina.
Her eyes are a brilliant green tinged with specks of pure silver, and her auburn hair grabs the light and hurls off highlights like javelins of gold.