Aramis stopped in the cool shade of a thick, green tree, wiping off the sweat on his face with the back of his hand. As he drank from the water bottle in his backpack he watched the people go by. All that passed were dressed in modern clothes, just like him, with heavy backpacks often laden with sleeping bags and roll mats, but there had been one or two he had spotted in the last few weeks dressed in medieval garb. They obviously took the old school approach to pilgrimage, especially the one walking on bare feet.
But even they had one thing in common with the masses, one single symbol that united them all.
The scallop shell was everywhere: suspended around necks, hung atop wooden staffs, dangling from backpacks. One or two folks even had it inked across their skin. It had also made a home in the landscape: on sign posts, lamp posts, stone waypoint markers and even carved into the very footpath itself.
It even was on the postcards he had sent home to Porthos and Athos.
Aramis was carrying one around his neck. It hung on a string over his heart, just below the rosary cross he always wore. It would stay with him until he had achieved his goal: the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, and then back home again, to his two friends and the businesses they had planned to start.
But he could only get back home if he kept on walking, not dawdling underneath a tree.
He replaced his water bottle in his backpack, careful not to crush the paper passport stashed in there. He needed that to get stamped at the checkpoints on the way, to prove that he really had walked all the way to the cathedral.
Slinging his load onto his back he took one step forward, then another, towards his long awaited goal.