Long ago, in the age of mysteries and brutality, a blind prophet lived on a holy mountain. The jagged crags of stone and monolithic trees pierced the heavens, but the prophet had no love for the infinite cold above, for the stars could never dazzle in those misted eyes, which in turn could never see the prophet’s shadow cast by moonlight or stretched tall and frail by the sun. The prophet worshipped the earth below, for it carried all known things above it. The prophet’s ears heard the secret whispers of tectonic plates as they shifted their burdens. Moss tickled the prophet’s feet with loving mischief. Best of all, the sea that crashed against the mountain’s bottomost ledges had carried a young scholar to the blind prophet’s shores.