The hunter crept silently from beneath piñon pines to the barely discernable bunch grass and opuntia between. His moccasined feet made no sound on the sandy soil; his dark, soft clothing absorbed light and sound, making him a black silent hole in the deep gray background. If he were to look up, which he never did, only the whites of his eyes would betray the presence of a human being disturbing this satiny night
His prey stood on the near horizon, invisible for now, its exact position known to the hunter through long stalking and planning. The ground between hunter and prey was bare of vegetation, making it easier to avoid detection and alarm.
He stooped forward and began to crawl, holding in his left hand a complicated arrangement of strings and wood, pulleys and cams, with a large hoop attached. Keeping the tool from scraping across the ground was a challenge, but he'd had hours of practice at maneuvering the awkward thing, practice that paid off now in a silent approach.
Sounds began to penetrate the silence, sounds the hunter knew came from beyond his prey, hissing and rumbling sounds as of large objects moving swiftly across hard packed surfaces, sounds occasionally accompanied by a broad sweep of lights across distant mesas. So much the better to mask the tiny whispers of his inevitable approach.
Soon he came to the base of a slight rise on which his prey waited. He looked up briefly and could see the dark outline obscuring occasional stars beyond. He was in place. It was time to act.
In a practiced effort, he removed a long iron spike from the folds of his clothing and pressed its pointed end into the yielding, sandy soil. It penetrated a good six inches and then stopped as expected. He removed another bulkier, cloth-wrapped object and with several well-placed muffled blows, drove the stake deep into the bosom of the soil, making firm and loving contact with the moistness held therein.
Rising to his knees he quickly fitted a slender shaft to the string of the complicated device in his left hand, an aluminum shaft with imitation turkey feathers at one end and a gleaming, sharpened point at the other, catching the distant glint of approving stars. He rose fully to his feet, raised eyes, hand and shaft to the heavens and drew back the string to its knock point at the corner of his moustached mouth. And held...
For moments he stood like a statue of an ancient god casting prayers to the heavens, indistinguishable from the constellations above, at one with the Earth, content at the task at hand, focused, relaxed and alert.
Then the smooth, practiced release of string and shaft. The coiled forces in the bow threw themselves through wooden limbs, curving cams and rolling pulleys, the shaft sprang forward with an almost audible cry of joy, leaping for the night sky and freedom. Or nearly. For as the shaft rose into the cold desert air, a slender but strong thread followed its path, uncoiling from the reel on the face of the bow, tracing a hissing curve of the arrow's trajectory, up into the sky, over the top of the towering prey, to the peak of its path, the apex of its ambition, the denouement of its escape from the bounds of material being.
Suddenly the thread drew taught, anchored as it was to the iron stake firmly imbedded in terra firma, at the archer's feet. The arrow stopped abruptly and fell toward Earth, captivated once again by immutable gravity, it's stellar ambitions thwarted, redirected to a nobler cause. As the arrow fell, the thread followed after, downward toward the prey, the tower, the bristling antennae, the circling girders, the electricity pulsing through wire and cable, the radiation broadcast outward in scintillating concentric waves.
