Old Roads

Each story I tell begins the same way, with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.  Where once we walked in light and certainty, there is now a tunnel as if in a wood.  Dark branches arch above, pressing together to block out the sun.  This city is a forest.

It was not so long ago that the stars were above us, in the high places somewhere near the world's end.  We lived as nomads, and the people were good to us.  The stranger with his bus who drove us down from the summit and the many kilometers after, past fields of crops and factories that made the air redolent of processed dog food.  The old man with his pick-up, who loved his town so much all he wanted to do was take us up to see the lights.  Not a one of them spoke our language, but they could read our faces.

We came by night to the town beneath the volcano.  It smoldered as it slept, breathing steam into the sky so none would forget its authority.  There we learned to dance to rhythms of a far off and sunny place, guided by hands that pressed into ours and pulled us close.  In the cool of the night, as we lay entwined, the soft dialogue of our breathing held more truth in it than all of our words since.

We would be reminded that we had souls, and of the hands that created them.  On the hard paths that led into the teeth of the mountains, where death would tug at our coats as to toss us to a beautiful death...for everything there was beautiful.  The cold nights, and deer would watch on with more curiosity then fear, and the fox would stand guard by the rocks.  The snow wet us, then the rain, but we never froze.

Somewhere near the end, our paths split and we never saw each other again.  The earth rose up to the sky, and miles and miles later, the city grew and enveloped and choked and trapped.  There are ways out yet, though they are dark.  There are places that wait and people that wait.