Hollow Kingdom

So great is Kira Jane Buxton’s Hollow Kingdom, a “zombie apocalypse” story as told by domestic pets, that I needed to share some passages, something I never think to do. What starts out hilarious, becomes both elegiac and profoundly optimistic. Highly recommended.

Butterflies live short lives because they have mastered the art of living. They serve to pass it on with bursts of joy, bright flickers from the other side… The paper-winged ones are truth-tellers, postage-stamp sized messengers who paint the air into a watercolor of magic and taste with their feet. We are best advised not to blast them with Roundup.

— S.T.

Your magnificent eyes have been down. Do you know how many years I am? Did you know that there are more lives in a palmful of soil than of your kind on this big beautiful blue?

My gift to you is to know that we are here, all around you, talking to one another and dreaming of your success. Sorcery is everywhere, in the silver stroll of a slug and lighting up the very veins of you. Open those beautiful eyes to a world who is a mosaic of magic. She is just waiting for you to notice.

— Just above the root structure of a 200-year-old Spruce Tree (translation by a Steller’s Jay)

… when you are close to an elephant, you feel so deeply. If they choose, they have the ability to hold your sadness, so that you may safely sit in the lonely seat of loss, still hopeful and full of love. Their great secret is that they know everything is a tide — not a black tide, but the natural breath of life — in and out, in and out, and to be with them is to know this too.
Howl out old pain. It is a soft and sonorous magic. …we will fall in love with each moment, singing to a moon that has loved us since we were stars.

— sho’ lee ‘tsah, female wolf of nomadic blended wolf pack

…my big journey … is how I know what I’ve told you is true. About how Mother Nature is not kind, but she is balanced. Every single one of us, from amoeba to blue whale to the tenacious bloom that dares to dream of tomorrow, have their own destiny-fulfilling journey as long as their minds and hearts are open.

—S.T.

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