RALPH WALDO EMERSON VS. A MOUNTAIN LION

    The climb up was not easy. Ralph felt his brittle ribs moving in and out, sucking in the sweet mountain air as his woody walking stick tapped the ground directly in fore. Nature! he thought loudly, determined to drown out the sound of his quick, flavorless breaths with psychic prose praising her eternally accepted beauty. Truly does she satisfy by her loveliness, her resplendent massif peaks jutting forth like proud parturient breasts ready to bathe those below in her muliebrital milk of ribald life; Yea, Nature indeed! These ruminations continued unabated as his spindly legs sought steady ground, tripping over their own footing every third or fourth pace. A pinecone is as a house for a hope, yea! Nature! His walking stick tapped the mountain-ground piteously, pleading for a shift from soliloquy to motor skills, but his placated intellect ignored the corporeal plea and continued on its mollifying tack. The Earth laughs in wood squirrels! Ha-ha and Yea!
    Soon, the only sound Waldo could hear was the grandiloquence of his own thoughts, rebounding bout his skull. So immense were these commendations that they blocked not only the sound of his gasping breath, but that of Nature entirely; he was blind to her rhythms, oblivious to her staccato undertones, and deaf to the violet purr of the encroaching mountain lion that curled around the mountain steps. The verdant hills are as a feather, to tickle God’s happiness! O, ye bountiful Nature!
    The monstrous paw came down on Waldo’s shoulder with a dampening thud, promptly tearing through the knapsack containing pound upon pound of prune-based trail mix and neatly taking a chunk of flesh from the Transcendentalist’s right shoulder. Zounds and ruinfull direness, a mountain cat! his thoughts rang out, having been pulled from their praise by the hulking beast at his flank. Shedding the now worthless prune-pack to the stone floor, Waldo brought his walking stick into a passata-sotto stance and readied for the massy cat to strike again. Come, come, you felis fiend, usurper of the sweetness of solitude! Impale yourself on my walking stick, hugrah! The mountain lion and the frail essayist matched each other pace for pace, circling in concentric suspense, both biding for their inch to strike. No longer were Waldo’s feet unsure of the step they would take next, for his gaping shoulder-contusion launched him into Kill Mode. Emerson was a man who loved Nature, until he had to kill it.
    The cougar was the first to move, coiling its hind legs into murder-sprockets to send the pinball of its body flying in the direction of the American intellectual. The cougar’s mind was ready, calm, precise and unknowing, as all cougar’s minds are mid-flight; the cat existed perfectly in those half-seconds, those fragile few moments of winged release from the pounding austerity of daily mountain life, for born in the cougar’s mind was a state of pure being, existence reinforced by its very presence, for it does not give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes that creature that it enlightens; or in proportion to that truth it receives, it takes the cat to itself. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect, perpetual and ceaseless. The big cat then descended and bit the neck flesh off of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
    Gad-zooonks! Waldo cried in his mind, raising the walking stick with a mindless, seething speed, bringing it down squarely in the cougar’s right eye. Howling at an almost extramundane frequency, the cat recoiled, shaking its heavy head side to side like a madman’s carnival ride in a inefficacious attempt to shake the twig free. Wounded, the combatants staggered wildly round their makeshift battleground, the cat semi-blinded by the accumulating sight-blood and Ralph working hard to keep his neck-mess together. By nature, it’s time to end this! the Transcendentalist thought loudly.
    With eyes phosphorescent, the intellectual’s body rose high into the air, surrounding itself with a queer green light that seemed to pulsate with idolatrous foreboding. The mountain cat, now entirely sightless, strained to spy the happenings-on, his ear-senses piqued from the mile-high whirring that was enveloping the sound of the mountain. Come, Oversoul! Smite this bloodied foe! conducted Emerson to the green mist, which was slowly growing in magnitude and density. Emerson’s feeble frame, now hundreds of feet suspended from terra firma, started to shake with an unholy fascination so fast and bright that the outlines of his form began to bleed into the surrounding skies. The cougar cocked its sanguinary head in bold unknowing; slowly, slowly, the green mist took shape, curling from the transience of thought into the horror of action. Feed this grimalkin to the hungered angels on high! Rend him limb from paw! And teach he the perils of doubting the eternal collective indivisible!
    Responding as a single, cohesive unit, the green mist plunged towards the baffled feline and snatched the puss by the nape, speeding the cat skywards to meet its once tellurian foe. Creating a bridge of glaucous mist between the cat and the Waldo, the sentient smog began to surge with impious intent, pumping energies upon untold energies into the hovering Transcendentalist. Yes! Yes! More, more, I say – heed my call, my Oversoul, and proffer me more! Bading its master’s terrible request, the haze grew bright as a dying star, swallowing mouser and man in its virescent hoary light. For a brief moment, the mountain lay bathed in this verdant soul shine, absorbing the luminescence like a cheap bathtub until both light and cat were gone.
    Touching down with an amber calmness, the Transcendentalist raised his arm to feel a wholly re-formed neck and shoulder blade as he smiled knowingly. Picking up the blood-seeped walking stick and taking a few maladroit steps, he peered through the grey-green boughs and into the azure sky. The sun is a hot love! he thought loudly, walking on his way.