Bridges

You crossed the bridge dragging flaming brands, so, of course, that bridge burned behind you. Every bridge you crossed burned in this same way until there was no return possible. Now you are in an unfamiliar land and there is no way back. You can barely see your homeland through the mist…or is that just illusion beckoning? Perhaps all the travels were a dream and you never had a home….. or never left it. You are a paper tiger in a land of iron nails. What the hammer to drive that spike through hands and feet and left to hang. Sun cast shadows creep across dry rock. Bitter blood , and salt. Trembling and chilled, the time is at hand.

You are treading now in dangerous terrain. Walk upon a thin crust of logic (or sanity?) and you can feel the heat from the cauldron below. Step by step you proceed across the brittle desolation. Hearing sharpened to a keen edge for the first crack but all you hear is the silence of the seashell you inhabit. You imagine a whole tectonic plate tilting up, rising hundreds of miles and you clambering higher, tilting at your windmills. You are on an errand all right….an errand boy sent by clerics to deliver a solution. You are not a knight with sword and lance but bear only a shield. You are in a defensive posture taking blows from the flailing blades that are mere grasses blowing in a gentle wind. Wait for the storm, then buckle on your armor and retrieve your weapons. It is time for the battle.