Faithful Pebble:
Part Twenty- Five
"Which way ought I go from here? Would you tell me, please?"
It didn't surprise him, not at all what he'd discovered immersed in that black soulless world. Say it with me. Another tunnel. Another passageway. The wanderer sighed heavily. He could easily see her handy work, the claw marks gouging into the walls, the rounded worm like corridors cocooning harshly about him dark and foreboding. The only difference this time was the direction, the options staring back at him like good versus evil. There was only one choice, to the right. The left passage was still filled in, though there was evidence that it was a possibility, a beginning she was starting to expand upon.
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
"Begin at the beginning," a King once said, "Go forward till you come to the end, then stop."
"Go to the end then stop." The wanderer closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, his frustration dragging on further than the time. How long did he have left? He didn't know. He didn't care, not now. This was more important. Decided, the man turned and headed down the low ceiling tunnel, his back arching uncomfortably as he meandered straight into the heart of the darkness, her darkness.
Minutes passed, the tick, tick, ticking of the second-hand tock, tock, tocked slower and lower from the bottom of his pocket. The path meandered on and on into a world that didn't change. After a moment, he paused bending, crouching, whimpering with his hand on his back where an ache had begun to settle. How far did she dig? The wanderer looked back up from whence he came and squinted. The image, the tunnel curved walls blurred in and out as the light began to fade once more. It didn't last as long as it did before. He licked his lips them pressed forward another minute, another hour until the walls were merely dirt under his fingers. He could barely see.
"How long is forever?"
"Sometimes, just one second."
He should have stopped. He should have retrieved his watch and re-ignited his vision but the desire to press on pushed him forward. Refusing even to consider these things, he thus didn't see when the tunnel finally did open up. Nearly blind, the man stumbled, lurched then fell finding a crevasse that suddenly appeared beneath his feet.
Say it with me. Sing it. Of what did he find, the wanderer? Into what did he fall?
Eye spy with my little eye…
Another tunnel. Another—
It swooped. He slid down further and further into the earth, left, right and back again towards the direction of that first wretched vortex of the well. It caused him to curse, tumble, and grit his teeth. Only from sheer luck did he spy the rising cliff rearing up to eat him. Its mouth opened and he? He just—
Ashes, Ashes.
We all fall down.
- Calla