Monday, Apr. 26, 2004 - 12:54 a.m.

The climb to the top of the mountain had been a hard one - it had taken hours to reach this far. I was now above the clouds – the air was thin, and the grass had finally allowed itself to be suffocated by the snow. I saw a few stray flowers peeking up through the albino landscape, purples and blues, but generally it seemed they’d surrendered to the elements. I was standing on a ridge, I couldn’t go any higher. There was a lake far below me, now, inside the mountain. I could make it out, vaguely, through the clouds. It must have been a volcano, millions of years ago – no evidence of warmth remained at this height, certainly no evidence of the boiling innards of our planet. I decided to climb down.

No snow fell in the basin of the mountain. It was almost entirely green, save for the lake – pure white, reflecting the clouds above. I couldn’t see the sky. There were a few trees, placed randomly around the edge of the lake. The purple and blue flowers from the top of the mountain were here, too, only there were more of them. There was no animal life in the basin, but that was understandable.

As I moved closer, I saw that the lake was clear. Night time had arrived on the mountain, but there seemed to be a natural luminescence – the lake shone. The walls of the basin were drenched in a pink glow – faint, but it let me see. I could make out jellyfish - hundreds of them - floating silently. They didn’t seem to have any reason to be there, but they didn’t cause a ripple. Beyond them, under them, between them, there were black shapes gliding through the water. They looked like tadpoles – huge tadpoles - but there were no frogs here. I didn’t know what they were going to turn into, but I guessed it must be important. If you’re going to go to the trouble of hiding something away up here, it’s not going to be an ordinary thing.