Dark in Fall I

Dawn cast the sky purple and the clouds into flames as the world awakened. Shadows stretched from the pocked wrinkles on the face of a Great Mountain, dotting it with irregular patches of inverted stars. Where the shadows did not touch, a light brownish hue shone with rolling undulation. The color of the fall-turning foliage following the stone roots twisting out from the massive peak into a rocky range jutting up from a stony flatland. Pools and lakes of shadow kept between the lower peaks cutting the shapes of the mountains into stark relief.

In some ways one can see better with the darkness.

Diurnal animals born anew from the tiny death of sleep arose to stretch and run. Themselves casting shadows long and gangly moving like long legged spiders about the cold earth. The many moving stealthily were not aware of their shadows giving them away from above, below, and within. Flying animals moved farther away from their shadows. Departing them while they departed the ground, throwing them so far from their true form, the two barely seemed related. Among these was the Shadow who saw the others. Moved through this world without a form, as though it were flying overhead at an impossible distance. And in some ways, it was.

High in the rocky range, but low to the Great Mountain, the irregular blots of shadow marking holes and chasms and divots ceased abruptly in a line above which the shadows painted only lines and curves of regular form. A place of otherworldly order whose law had been imposed onto the mountain. Organization and clarity cut into natural irregularity and by appearance had for a time been sustained. But no more. Though the shapes were regular, the natural order had in turn intruded back on them, separating pieces with jagged lines, and rounding sharp corners, the ravages of age and unchecked weathering by forces of greater longevity than the Builders of this ruined city.

An awesome sight from below the range where the city had been fashioned. And marking the great potential discovery of a path to safely arrive at its limits. When this discovery was made, there had been many failed attempts to navigate the steep rocks, covered firmly in other forms of life, ancient and unmoving. And already the appetite in the peoples of the region to enter and study the city was insatiable. When the first band set foot inside the gates they found them locked with strange double seals whose shadows were almost as rigid as the metal rings on the wood. When they let themselves in, they let something else out.

And I am thankful they did.

For in the city in the rocky range in the shadow of the Great Mountain, I wait. Separate from the part of myself that knows the world, and still as the icy stone forming these mountains. My form marks the spot where the people who once lived in this city left this world for another. Moved perhaps by the same curiosity calling these younger explorers to our collection of empty homes. Inside my form, is what many consider to be the I, myself. The inner world of reflection, thought, inspiration and emotion. And form has been my home for uncounted years. When the beings I once called my people came to know of new places, having more in common with ideas than locations, I could not have known what fascination they would hold for them. Inside my form, I know myself to be a warrior, and the part of my mind that is outside my form is the explorer. The pieces are as I am now, standing in-between.

One realm of the hard and fast, of movement of speed and of time, and the other of notion, of image, and moments of eternity. Light is alien here, except the Light of the Mind, which could traverse the nonexistent spaces and infinitesimal distances beyond length. And shape it. Moving beyond the physical was not something that could be done alone. It required the unity of the tribe down to mind and body, including the internal and external minds. Those that left the world left it in their minds long ago. Not bothering with it long before they made their physical departure. Peering into their new home from afar for ages long past.

I could not leave this world of fleeting time, and slow and long, and long and short. Where distances are walked, and waves wash down from the sun to warm the world having walked them. And to have the honor of seeing it as they do, to be free of the other movements of rushing time, the currents pushing all of this reality unyieldingly forward on a path which cannot be perceived. Too much movement blurs vision. But I cannot see this world without the part of me which traverses it. The shadow with no body to cast it. Freed at last by the explorers who grace this city, the third generation of whom I can now almost feel digging, and collecting, and discovering around me. The explorers I my perception races back to witness. And to whom I will extend the offer of transcendence. In exchange for allowing my perception to journey this vast plane, to once again experience the World outside the city, I will offer them a glimpse beyond the Gate.

I can feel my Shadow returning, and I am catching sights and sensations it has witnessed outside the stone walls of the mountains, the long reaching beams of the sun unmasking the rocks. Life awakening on the slopes of the Great Mountain. The excited chatter of the people of the cities below. A roar of wonder racing through time and space to live and breathe and die and change as the current of destiny is slowly pulled by all things. It will be upon me soon, casting my form, great or small into full shadow, and stark contrast to the mountain’s pale visage. Two parts merging so that I may experience this outer world and these newcomers fully. To experience the outer world through the memory of the Shadow, and so that the Shadow can see the inner world through mine. That we may be as close to one as we once were.

And I will open the Gate for the Explorers. United once more as when I did it so many eons ago. Where they go will be up to them, for I am simply the one who looks after the Gate. And after, I shall wait as the Shadows grow and move across the world, and return to me the experience of its beauty. As the morning breaks daily over the Great Mountain, as the bright summer yields to the dark in fall, so too shall the cycle of passage beyond time always begin anew.

#made with love from scotty to trevor