The Endless Stair.
An Iron Age Media Prompt - The Vennels.
My footsteps are awkward and unsure as I walk up these vennels, breathless, the atmosphere up here is different than the down below but still I persevere. Rheams of mist lead up to columns of clouds and all that is visible are these damn steps, but still, as the sun wanes and sets the sky is a light in a brilliance my heart can hardly comprehend and I can barely describe.
Step by step, aimless thoughts run through my head. I recall my time as a squire and the excitement of serving my first sire, the duty I felt and custom involved was almost like ceremony to me. I recall Isabella, my childhood friend and future wife, having innocent acorn fights and falling among the autumn leaves experiencing our first kisses together.
My Sherpa leads me and I recall his words at the onset of our journey, that if a man could hold his breath from bottom to top that he would achieve enlightenment. It was the first I ever heard of the word and even though I feigned interest at such a concept, since my struggles on this trek started, I can barely keep it out of my mind.
As we pass faceless strangers I wonder if we seem as they to us. Lost. Searing pain lashes through my head like a heathen at the whips of their lords and I recall flashes of battles long past. The dins of sword and shield penetrate my mind, and the racket of catapults returning the dead to their masters, an effect of the psyche of both sides that I must admit I am now ashamed. To battle we went on horseback to fight enemies of distant lands. Lords I obeyed and never questioned, for what? To live? To get by? No. We could have easily lived in peace and Isabella and I could have had many children together. Morning star breaks shield and I am standing over my enemy, a bloodlust has come over me and I end his miserable existence. After the many battles to come and I sit alone by my hearth and wonder if I should end my own.
Still, we trek the endless stairs, and even as I have experienced the pain of the visions, my heart is lighter. My abhorrence and shame wash aways like an early spring morning dew that now pelts us and I am glad. My Sherpa says something and I only now realise that he speaks another language. I don’t bother myself to wonder how I can understand but only know, now I feel lighter, less burdened.
Finally, I dare again to look ahead and my heart lifts and my breath speeds up. A second wind is upon me when I see a break in the clouds and, to wondering eyes, an imminent end. This second wind seems to fall upon my Sherpa as well, as he speeds ahead of me, I am slowly drifting behind him. I call out, but now my surroundings are a haze. Reality and this mystic place blend and a sorrow overcomes me as I if have been rejected. My Sherpa disappears and the break in the clouds close and I am sped back to my body, laying, hip broken as I have taken a nasty turn in my old age. My nephew calls out my name and looks over me stupefied as I take my last breaths. The light goes out in my eyes and I am flooded again with memory of old but this time I feel no regret, no sadness, no sense of loss. What flashes through my mind is, what comes next?
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