Thursday, May 09, 2013

I'm walking next to the slow moving current… what is it. It's not a river, what flows in it is a dense, viscose substance that swirls as it goes, making a low humming, scratching noise. It goes all the way down the highland valley and falls down, unseen from here, off the cliff at the end in the distance. A little bit like a glacier -but glaciers are not red and mauve and purple and don't swirl as they go. I have no idea what would happen if I fell in that stream but I have no wish to find out, so I walk down a few hundred meters to the bridge ahead, the flimsy rickety bridge that should take me to the other side, where the mists begin and where up far away I am awaited. Over the hum of the stream and the distant muffled roar of the cascade, I can hear the sound of a horn in the distance. The pitch of the long, long note goes up and then drops at the end, then they play again, each note at least half a minute. It is a summons. I'm near the bridge now; as I step on it, it wobbles from side to side and I very carefully walk, stopping every few steps when it feels too unsteady. On the other side of the bridge, the grass appears and disappears in the mist, the slow ascent will begin. The horn sounds again. Then I notice the star; in the middle of the misty day, I can still make out a red dot in the sky, like an ominous eye surveying over the world. As I leave the bridge behind, I hear it crack, bits of it fall in the stream. I will have been the last one to cross here, I think, as I walk into the mist, up the low gradient towards the mountains at the end of the valley. The horn sounds again, its echo lingering. Today the world will change.

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