There was a sharp crack from ...

There was a sharp crack from somewhere on the mountain. Then another. It\'s just a tree falling, he said. It\'s okay. The boy was looking at the dead roadside trees. It\'s okay, the man said. All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.
There was a sharp crack from somewhere on the mountain. Then another. It's just a tree falling, he said. It's okay. The boy was looking at the dead roadside trees. It's okay, the man said. All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.

Quotes from the same author

The wind sounded of Mother Earth's forsaken and abandoned cries.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?
It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.
Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.