Wanderer

An unnamed traveller meditates on the foreign landscape he finds himself in.

Source photo attribution: National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen - Photomanipulation by D. A. Anderson - Photo used under Creative Commons license

Lines. Lines cut the sky but drawn by rain, drawn and quartered, lay unbloodied in a gray field waving grain-heads of cumulonimbus. Lenticular. Mountain heights, rolling silently, whispered between each other, stalwart guardians of day but awful giants at night.

When my walking stick plunged into the dirt and jostled the loose soil, little rocks tumbled off the edge of the cliff. This path was dressed with moss, fronds, and little succulents that drank up morning dew too deep. You little desert flora—what are you doing so far from home?

I should've asked myself the same question.

The leather under my boots was worn, the cords coming unstrung. I'd have to take my awl and needle, weaving it through the soles of my foot. 

Underfoot, somewhere, caves lingered, growing their own gardens of salt and calcium sans photosynthesis; mouths with slowly growing teeth, sealed shut, dressed with lips of moss I now trampled. It grew back, I reasoned, consoling myself. My bloody footprints—they wouldn't last long, thank gods. No traveler could be as quiet as these mountains.

I unsheathed the knife I cut my bread with and, bending down, picked a mushroom with respect, cutting from the stem so as not to disturb its mycelia. It was a soft and tender horn springing from the ground; underneath, its little brainy veins whispered a dialect only Cernunnos knew. I tried my best imitation: wind dribbled from my soggy lips like crumbs and carved rivers through my beard-hairs, suggesting braids I hadn't bothered with that morning.

I looked back along the path I treaded. Only hoofprints led to where I now was.