making this up

I'm making this up, of course. The starry cataract, the moony mountain; the old man dancing in deep snow; then, later, imparting his wisdom to a rapt young boy, the light slowly failing in the summer dusk.

Where that house is, that lake — I have seen many houses, beside many lakes. I remember some old man, and now I have become him. Like the Man in the Moon, who killed his brother, but was caught and imprisoned in the empty night sky.

But no sky is empty, is it? Every sky has a moon, and stars, and sometimes clouds, and every one of them has a story, or more than one. Or so we believe, and cannot help it.

That mountain, that waterfall: once they were not there, nothing was; but now, there they are. I see them, don't I? Don't you?

So we go, down into that valley with the lake and the ruined House, dreaming of a time we cannot possibly remember, but that we know is there, like that waterfall, and the mountain opposite, with the moon perched on its shoulder, regarding us with its murderer's eyes.