The omphalos of the world slowly fills with water. Rainwater collects in the sacred stone, and though animals and birds drink from it, the sun evaporates it, green growing things siphon it, the level rises inexorably.

If the omphalos overflows, the stories say, it will be as if an ocean of tears pours over the world. We will all drown in a welter of sadness. But who remembers the stories these days? Who, beneath the rainbow-coloured sky knows how to stop the rising of the waters of oblivion?

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