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Gift Eggs

Like gift eggs, boulders can be given, presented to each other, it is almost our duty to reserve stones for others, like putting the first fish back, to witness second hand the freedom gained, movement by proxy, slipping away in someone else's timestream... Si had left these stones, silent and untouched, overlooking the Raasay currents, his back rooked, maybe enjoying the gifting, the curiosity of others' movements, the establishment of different rhythms and limits...

The gulls wheeling over like screaming heads, the Sound whipped up into quiffs and the chill blue of winter sun in the water... one of those days when the wind blows through the very minute construction of the body, through the chemistry of flesh, you're transparent and part of the landscape, as malleable as vapour and just as fluid, moving over the rocks like wind, sifting, drifting, merging...

The currents of other climbers move in and out of each other, their company like speeded winds clash and merge in strange brief shapes, laughter is wind, the rocks are but shapers and cleavers of movement... the Coire receives us like natural beasts, inheritors of stone, our hands touch them lightly, the whole day a clear blue flickering of light and flesh, our small bleedings gathered into the heather and washed off in the burns, to become part of the unseen river which moves through all our interstices.

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