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The Archbishop

 “It never gets old. Like watching living mountains dance. Look, now.” Harper says it in a whisper so close to me I can smell the whiskey on his breath. Christ, man, I think to myself. Ease on the— and then I see them. 


It’s dim morning, everything wreathed in grayness and silence, far off hills undulating charcoal colored waves. Ink-black trickles snake their way across a plain of muck, dirt. Westerly forests are all cloaked in fog. Gloomy shadows.


There are giants in the clearing. Behemoths. Massive, near-vertical necks seem to effortless rise up into the sky, carrying delicate looking heads to survey our earthly realm beneath. “Watch.” Huge muscular slats down flanks and rippling tendons layered upon pillar legs, clawed toes that could crumble concrete. The whip tail is almost comedic, swishing with elegant undulations. 


The dinosaurs are leviathans. Almost— fuzzy. Hard to see, hard for primate minds to grasp and reason with, the way they move as if buoyant, ballet dancers nearly two hundred feet from nose to tail tip. They seem to coalesce out of so much rippling steel-colored sky. Clouds given flesh, muscle, form. Their colors are subtle but dazzling from all manners of layered, striped dark and light, like a vision of battleships given confusing camouflage. Black on ivory, splashed with ocher and azure. 


I’m in awe. Slack-jawed. My heart throbs like I’m witnessing an Angel. Slow, deep beats leaving me breathless. No picture, no holo vid— nothing has prepared me for this. 


One of the dinosaurs steps out to lead his people with all of the regality and majestic pride that every monarch in human history has tried, and failed, to attain. 


“There. See him? The Archbishop. The largest I’ve ever seen, so big that when I first laid eyes on him I truly thought he was a goddamn mountain, hoisted up on legs by God as some kind of joke..”


My bones vibrate. I feel like suddenly the world is singing to me, deep-voiced and ancient, a sermon that would crumble cathedrals to their foundations. Fear, wonder. I half-stand, ready to run or to pray, looking wildly until I look to Harper. He’s standing there, arms open and wide, head back to the sky. Eyes closed like a monk in contemplation. Then I realize. 


The dinosaurs are singing.

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