A Mountain View

Well, I know it’s been a while. Hit a bit of a rough spot again around here, but things are getting better. Then I saw Kat’s #SwiftFicFriday prompt, the picture added below, and knew I had to write something for it. This is probably a bit more of an idea that could eventually grow, but I want to share this version with you now. I give you…

A Mountain View

He climbed the ever-steeper trail. Wind whipped around him, turning the snow into miniature razors against what little skin he could not completely cover. Not that it mattered much. Tears frozen to his face had already chapped his skin to the point it would bleed as soon as he was again warm.

Not that I’ll ever be warm again, not after this.

The man continued to slip and stumble through snow past his knees. It hid rocks and holes in the trail. More than once he fell, slamming his hands through the frozen crust. Yet he kept his eyes up, watching up the trail toward the top of the mountain he fought so hard to climb with only the stars for company.

At the top, he found the small plateau he worked so hard to reach. His clothes were stiff with ice and the knees of his breeches had holes clean through to his leggings beneath.

The man searched the skies but saw only distant cold twinkles of the stars set in the night’s emptiness.

“Why?” he screamed into the heavens. “Why did you take her from me? My Ealis was all I had left!”

The man dropped to his knees, tears once again streaming down his face, hidden in his hands. A moment more and he would end it all. He hadn’t expected the gods to answer a mere man, but a compulsion to look up overwhelmed him.

Against his will, he tilted his face to the sky in time to see colors splash against the darkness. Pinks and greens and whites danced across the vastness until they reached his mountain top. There, they paused, reaching out to brush the man’s cheek.

And he understood Ealis was not gone.