update from sparkleup

writing/dont-look-up.html

@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
 <p>But then the enormity of my error crashed into me and knocked my soul from that anchored form and suddenly she was alive and I was dead, and I watched as her path began to steeply descend. I watched her face wrestle with the dichotomy (dialectic?) of pain and relief at the sudden ache of muscles that comes with descending after so long ascending, of coming alive after so many days or weeks or years of being dead. And then I watched a third emotion, pity, crest in those features as her black-stained-pink ears canted back and her furless tail flitted this way and that to help her keep her balance. I saw pity in her gaze as she met mine, and the unspoken knowledge passed between us that whatever curse she bore was now mine to carry.</p>
 <p>I watched as her path took one switchback, then another, through the air and then her feet met the trail &mdash; the anchored trail on which I stood &mdash; for the first time in who knows how long. I watched as, with pity painted upon her face, she mouthed a silent apology to me, and stumbled down the path to where my car even now was parked, if it hasn&rsquo;t already been towed.</p>
 <p>I have inherited her curse. I have died so that she may live, and even as I stomp and stamp along the trail, the evidence rolls out before me like some red carpet from some thinner reality. I don&rsquo;t know how long I&rsquo;ve been walking, I don&rsquo;t know how long <em>she</em> had been walking, but I know that this is mine to bear until it isn&rsquo;t, until some poor fool looks up in the air and sees me, however far above, or that very air thins to nothing and I gasp and struggle for breath and burn up in the heat of the sun even as I freeze to death, there in the rarefied air.</p>
-<p>I am a ghost. That is evidence. I am a ghost because I ignored the admonition and looked up to the heavens and saw a lonely ghost in turn, and even as she stepped down to earth and breathed the breath of life, my own breath was taken from me.</p>
+<p>I am a ghost. That is evidence of my error. I am a ghost because I ignored the admonition and looked up to the heavens and saw a lonely ghost in turn, and even as she stepped down to earth and breathed the breath of life, my own breath was taken from me.</p>
 <p>I am haunting these trails, these woods. That, too, is evidence. I am the fox who walks and walks and walks. I am the fox whose hissed breaths between clenched teeth carry curses and pleas both.</p>
 <p>And now, I realize, my feet no longer touch the ground. That is the final evidence. My claws no longer dent the dirt that is half mud, half stone. My pads crunch against some more numinous trail now, something less tangible and more real than the anchoring earth below.</p>
 <p>I am inches off the ground, now. How long until I am feet off the ground? How long until, as I perpetually look down to the dirt and rocks and roots, I am able to measure my distance to the ground in multiples of me? How long until I, too, walk at the level of the treetops?</p>