Through thickets of poison to a cliff in the wind beneath dark skies, they followed. Not with their bodies, just with their eyes. They call them Dark Watchers, and stories of them in these hills go back generations. If you see them and try to approach one, they vanish into the landscape. I wish I could do that sometimes too, just stand and watch and observe the landscape as I paint it, and as soon as someone sees me and wants to come chat and get-all-up-in-my-business-wanting-to-know-if-I-make-a-living-doing-this-stuff-as-if-that-somehow-has-any-bearing-on their-ability-to-appreciate-what-I-am-doing-right-there-before-their-eyes, then poof, I vanish back into the earth from whence I came. That would be beautiful. When I grow up I want to be a Dark Watcher. And just maybe I will.