Little Boy Of The Mountain Z
--Z--.
The storm reached then to a great crescendo. Lighting bolts struck the stone circle, casting nine long shadows all about it, radiating outward. Eleven times the sky sent down white fire, and a small red flame sprung up from the crater, and orange-gold light glowed on the inner side of each of the tall dark stones.
Verily, he knew then that there was no small wooden house up there beyond, no humble farmstead, but rather a great castle redoubt. His great Keep - his first grand manorhouse with it's great tower and it's bells. And he knew also that it stood in ruins, as it had long stood, tumbled and shattered, it's bell cracked - along with all the hopes of his once-great people of that wonderful time. He had thought that all was lost, when the invaders came. But they had prevailed in their escape and grown in exile. They had rebuilt in far lands. Great things of beauty they had made, some of which perhaps survive yet. He had indeed forgotten much. Great bittersweet tides of emotion welled over him, and he heard the pitiful voice of an old man crying. His own voice.
He remembered the desert wastes, of his later kingdoms, grand and opulent, and those terrible wars and plagues, and intrigues. Ah! the small pyramid on the tributary that he had caused to be raised for his wife so long ago, in those years of exile. He remembered the Bastion and his Great Seat on the shiprock that overlooked it in longing.
He had never built his own, and one cannot enter what one has has not yet built. Why? How foolish he had been! What jeopardy had he bought upon the Change itself by so delaying?
He was resolved. He would step out over un-visited pools of salmon and climb the Spiders' web.
He remembered...
Tears ran from his eyes and joined the streams of water that seemed to be flooding the world. He fell to the muddy ground in a heap.
He began crawling. He turned back downhill, and abandoned all thought of the little wooden house. The streaming mud of the rain-hammered track caked his arms and body, and little loose stones tore at his palms. Upon his belly he began the long shivering journey down to the fords, and then on to the gorge. He saw in his mind the bones of Clipper, ancient and white in the glade that he would pass.
His legs were less useful now in aiding his movement. He paused one last time upon the way, and looked up from the muck at the riven, rain-washed sky. He could see a distant tetrad of familiar stars... and, Behold! :— glimmering Aurorae glowed upon the Eaves of the South, like as to ever-expanding Will-'O-Whisps.
He pulled himself onward down the hill with bent and tired fingers, along the rough, deluge-soaked track, full of rain-delved ruts and pouring runnels of dirty water. Sometimes he slipped and slid downhill. At all times his beard dragged in the mud beneath him, hindering his slow progress. Zöe walked along slowly and patiently next to him, carrying the lantern, chanting words he could not hear, but that he would remember.
.
— R.Ö.
Those were the last words I remembered of that evening by the campfire amongst those rough folk, for I fell into a very comfortable sleep, though not without strange flickers of dream.