Story-A-Day #106: Old Stairs

OLD STAIRS

He climbed the rotted logs, submerged as they were just beneath the dirt-specked layer of late February snow. The pieces of old timber that jutted out from the snow were rotten with age, hollowed out cores that had lost their strength over the years.

The stairs eventually ended at a plateau, but the narrow trail continued onward, out into the encroaching forest that lined the rear of the park. He knew the trails instinctively. He had mapped them in his youth, and explored every twist and turn he could discover. He had wandered off from the existing pathways, blazing routes of his own design that took him to secret corners of the forest full of gloomy mystery.

That had been a long time ago though. He had been a young man then, and was far from that now.

The snow added an additional degree of difficulty to his trek, but he continued on with grim determination. This was important. This was essential.

He slid and twisted along the rutted paths until he reach the dark copse of cedars. He paused for a sip of tea from his thermos, then stepped off the path and into the deeper snow where he sank up to his knees.

The journey grew wearisome, each step an entire journey in itself. He continued, lifting one leg and swing it ahead of the last, only to repeat the process: one step after the other, onwards into the clinging dark of the forest.

The trees grew in closer, certainly closer than he remembered them being. After an impossibly long trek, he realized that he had arrived. The cedars opened into a small clearing, on that was sheltered enough to merely be dusted in snow. He sat down on a fallen trunk and sipped his tea again.

“Are you here?” he finally called out into the gloom, his voice trailing off feebly. “I know you said not to, but I’ve returned. I had too.”

“I knew you would,” her haunting voice echoed through the enclosure. “I had hoped it would be longer, but all things are inevitable.”

“That they are,” he replied with a raspy chuckle. “We knew this was how it would come to be.”

“And so it has.”

He was happy. It had been a worthy journey, but he was ready to rest. He had traveled so far. It would be good to be home.