From the horizon come the clouds. They are heavy with rain, black flanks roiling and bubbling with precipitation. White lighting flashing and sparking across the turbulent mass. A vision of static. Of a million unintelligible connections.
The storm forges on. Enveloping and consuming the mountain landscape, grey-blue stones and grey-blue clouds becoming almost indistinguishable. Only to my sharp eyes.
Sunlit grey rocks sparkle as I pass by. Every glimmer demanding a glancing attention. Moss scuttles across the cracks. Somewhere in the distance I hear the crisp sounds of rushing water. The land I call home.
With every flicker and passing shadow, a wisp of a voice cries out. Begging to transfix me. The simple sway of the next step breaks their hold. But if I had stood still? If I had walked closer to inspect? And let myself be pulled into that unnatural fixed perspective of examination? Well, I do not like to imagine. Particularly not how a million glimmers could swarm a traveler and replace their mind with a thousand inarticulate stars on a dark field. With static. They, who are so easily distracted from wandering that they have a destination.
I am the Wanderer. But I hope the sky is just an apparition and not the same trick too strong for a mere step to break its hold.
I approach now. Or it approaches me. Swooping low across the plateau, imperceptibly swallowing the stones—floating and grounded—behind which voices hid. The lightning is cruel, striking at rock and moss alike. Rain drenches the ground and runs off the stone in great sheets and swells, washing off the mud essential to life. I look up to the clouds.
Out of the seething mass shapes come and go. Gliding forth only to be swallowed again. Works of unnatural art and mastery. Made for purpose not joy. A horrible sight in this beautiful land. Each seeking to pull me out into the sky, skewer my soul with lightning, and put my body to mundane tasks.
The great shapes ask me again and again, looming from different angles, with thunderous cries that shake the ground and push me back: “wouldn’t you like to…?” but the last word I cannot make out—there are too many speaking at once. Would I like to drink, to smile, to meet people? To hide away, to hear music better, to eat? Always too particular to be a warm-hearted offer. No, they want me to, for their own sake. So well designed, yes, so full of purpose, but not of life. Without my help they can only fade back into the overwhelming cloud. Into the great vision of static that now bubbles above me, seeking to absorb me and make my mind just as confused and without life. Helpless to their demands.
Yes, it is a trap as I had feared. To make me a settler and not a traveler. A prisoner and not a Wanderer.
So I do what is left to do, and succumb boldly in body but not in mind.
I kneel on the ground and bow my head as the storm crests over me. The shapes leer at me, simple, beautiful, deadly in a way I cannot understand. A cacophony of hypnotism. Seeking to make me wake up somewhere else without knowledge of what bidding I had done on the end of a lightning lance.
I close my eyes, my hands at my sides waiting. The rain is now upon me, falling like sheets of glass to break on my head and neck. Water trickles past my mouth, stealing its way into my lungs with every breath. Rivulets warp to my body in hopes of controlling the soul within. The ground quakes under an assault of thunder that drowns out even the voices. Lightning strikes all around. I feel its heat and kicked up pebbles bouncing against my body. Wind pushes me back and I slide along the ground. I feel the rage, the blind fury of the storm, at meeting someone it cannot control.
And once it has taken that rage out on the rocks and the mountain, and upon my frail body, I open my eyes to the clear sky and make my way towards the crisp sounds of rushing water.
