Dreams, by Olive Schreiner.
At age 12 I came across this book in a rummage sale, it was a tiny leather bound booklet. One of the short stories called The Hunter, gave me some kind of epiphany. It was the story of a hunter who caught a glimpse of a white bird and became obsessed with finding it.
At age 7 I caught a glimpse of a white bird that put me into an altered cosmic state, and I wanted desperately to see it again. In the short story, the hunter is told his bird is called the white bird of truth, and in the end he is able to clutch one of it's feathers as he lays dying.
