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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio N

… I was a bird, I had wings, I flew! An entire man-of-war was skewered on the fangs of the leviathan, and the sailors howled at me as I flapped by, and I was out! For a day and night I flapped over the infinitude of the ocean, and the sky above stayed blue and so did the waves below, and there were no continents and no ships, nowhere for me to set down and rest my wings. On the second day I grew tired, and the face of the sea darkened and the wind began to sing a frightening, phantom song. Silver fire flew in all directions, and thunderheads split the heavens, and my black feathers crackled white.

Hadn’t I suffered enough? From the sea below rose a great spout of water, whirling and screaming, carrying islands and cows, boats, and houses, and when it caught my puny crow wings, it tore me from my flight, spinning me ever higher, until the white glow of the moon burned my beak as I spun past, so close I could see the moon-beasts charging along their ghostly plains and drinking milk from great white moon-lakes, as frightened by me looking down as I was of them looking up, and I dreamed again of the summer evenings in Arkadia when the clover grew deep upon the hills, and the happy bells of my ewes filled the air, and the shepherds sat with their pipes, and I wished I had never embarked upon this…