---

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio Φ

… Looking into the ·[book,]· I felt as though I’d hung my head over the lip of a magical well. Across its surface spread the heavens and the earth, all its lands scattered, all its beasts, and in the ·[center?]·…

… I saw cities full of lanterns and gardens, could hear faint music and singing. I saw a wedding in one city with girls in bright robes, and boys with golden swords…

… dancing…

… and my ·[heart was glad?]·. But when I turned ·[to the next page?]· I saw dark, flaming cities in which men burned alive in their fields, and were enslaved in chains, hounds eating corpses, and newborns pitched over walls onto pikes, and when I bent my ear low, I could hear the wailing. And as I looked, turning the leaf over and back…

… beauty and ugliness…

… dancing and death…

… ·[was too much?]·…

… grew afraid…