the end of a strange, lyrical dream

"He looked about the camp, seeing the vines twisting and twining through the fenceline, and was acutely aware that if the guards simply left them they would all die here, that the jungle would devour them in a week, leaving no evidence. And that this was a deliberate perversion of the ivy covered walls of his home, a direct statement to the Brahmins that their vaunted intellectual magics faded as they moved east, and in these places held no sway, no sway at all."