It wasn't until the music started fading away, that I realized the ship and it's party were leaving without me. Left in the hollow of a pair of stairs, dancing between benches and water, the lightness of my feet faded with the music as the dragon drifted away across the sky - already too far away for my voice at any volume to reach them.
It was a moment of dislocation as tangible as a bone breaking.
Once my breath had returned and the pain had subsided, I took stock of where I was, the village wild and wooded around me with a few people walking past intent on their business. There was neither the emptiness of what now seemed an age ago, nor the bustle of the mountain city. I was an aimless minnow among salmon as my feet attempted to find the path again, but I was drawn not to the snug buildings shaded by brilliant evergreen but rather to an arching bridge over the waters, and the canvas within.
My fingers trailed over paint, long dried, tracing a gateway not yet seen and not yet known. The sun was soft on my face, an orange so burnt it turns everything faintly red. Even the green of the lotus leaves was softened sweetly by the sunset. I waded among the flowers, their heads heavy with seed, and the water was warm and wet on my fingertips. Moments later I'm back on the path, feet light with remembered song, past figures in stone holding lanterns and upon paving stones worn by the gentle weight of a village life.
Wild winds and falling leaves surrounded me as I leave houses and inhabitants behind. It felt as if I had passed without a trace, the world left as it were before I came. The breeze carried faint laughter to my ears as the sky itself came down to meet me - clouds and light joining into a pathway upwards into the sky. Stepping onto it is like stepping onto air itself, and I was borne upward into a new world.
( More pictures here. )
Credits:
Location: Medhir Woods
Light Settings: Sim Default
Water Settings: Sim Default
Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only
No comments:
Post a Comment