Here, the hallways echoed with the past, the stones whispered of another world. As I wandered, staring out the broken walls at the encroaching wilderness, I stepped into a bright ray of light. Arrested by the sudden luminosity, I stood in the midst of an irregular patch of sun. The day’s warmth was like a gentle massage, and I lifted my gaze: Above were the dark, half fallen rafters, old timber rotting away in this humid clime, broken through, here and there, by time and chance. Apolloās dusty fingers stretched down from those shadows in long rays like celestial pillars, slanting just noticeably as noon was past and the day was now dying. Not dead and by no means weak; yet weakening, inevitably heading toward dusk and shadow and night.
My eyes fell, and I found the path ahead dark as I stood in my little circlet of day. Memory said there were no turns to worry of, and as far as I knew, I was alone. Yet there it was. Blinded by the light, fear had crept through my veins, chilling my blood, and though the sun comforted me with warmth, it made me feel all the more the cold and damp that was ahead. This little respite might be a prison if I let it, this interim incarceration.
Out of the light and into the darkness, back again amid the whispering stones. There would come other consolations, I knew, before I reached the end. I would take them as they came, accept their tender joy, but I think I will not rest there. A pause might be deadly to me. I might stop entirely.
Tale Told 