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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio Y

… I sipped from the river of wine, once for valor, twice for pluck, and flapped toward the palace at the center of the city. Its towers pierced the Zodiac, and ·[inside?]· clear ·[bright?]· streams ran through fragrant orchards.

… stood the goddess, one thousand feet tall, tending the gardens in ·[her kaleidoscope dress]·, picking up whole plots of trees and setting them down again. Her head was circled by flocks of owls, and more owls roosted on her arms and her shoulders, and they studied their reflections in the glimmering shield strapped across her back.

… ahead, at her foot, surrounded by white ·[butterflies?]· on a pedestal so ornate it must have been fashioned by the smith-god himself, I saw it: the book the hoopoe said held the ·[solution?]· to my gnawing predicament. I fluttered above it, ·[prepared to read, when the goddess bent. Her great pupils loomed over me, each as big as a house. With one flick of one finger she could smite me out of the sky.]·

“I see,” she said, fifteen trees in each hand, “what you are, little crow. You are a pretender, a creature of clay, not a bird at all. In your heart you are still a feeble human, hammered from earth, with ·[the blaze of hunger inside]·…”

“… only wanted to ·[peek?]·…”

“Read from the book all you wish,” she said, “but if you read to the end you will become like us, free of desire…

“… never will you be able to return to your prior form. Go on, child,” said the flickering goddess. “Decide…”