Up the cropping of rock and perilous crags I clawed, the sun always at my back. Hours passed, and where my body tired, my mental coerce would submit not a moments rest. The skin of my fingers had become raw and blistered, it too an expression of how my hold on this “reality” grew tenuous. I became dry-mouthed and famished, my stomach churned and muscles screamed for respite, but these sensations were that of my previous world, weaknesses of he who I had strived to abandon on the darkening cliffs below.
I scaled the bloated face of ignorance and grew wiser. Thwarted the loose stones of servitude, and was inspired to persevere. The folly of indifference, malevolence, and personal regency soon lay beneath, yet still, the pinnacle of my formative years had not been conquered.
The clouds swirled mockingly overhead as I breathed an exhausted sigh of relief, lifting myself to one of the lofty precipice. From atop this perch I could see below me, sprawling out across the jagged canyon below, the remains of those who had attempted similar climbs. It seemed that those who made it as far as I were few, for blind eyes see naught the footholds of self-mastery.
With back pressed against cold, unyielding mountain, I traced my hand along the smooth surface of stone that swept in a skyward arch overhead. It appeared impossible to traverse. I had reached the summit of my ascension. My eyes had become clouded to the way to scale this next step of opposition, the size of which dwarfed all prior victories.
I had heard of this before from the hurried words exchanged between those of the valley below. They traded fables as if a commodity, each hoping to ascertain their piece of insight before beginning the climb themselves.
Tales of the impassable tier, the snowcapped conclusion to which all ventures of personal discovery find themselves at prolonged rest. Many had hurled themselves from these battlements of dissention, preferring the pain of death than that of denial. Of those who managed to surpass this final crest? Their stories were far fewer than those who sat below it in awe.
The wind caught my torn clothing, threatening to spill me to my end. A yawning emptiness, more consuming than any experience I had felt before opened up within me. Nothing remained but this final achievement. I was quickly being reminded of the heart I had near soon forgotten, and of the pressing ache that now lay upon it.
The stories of those who surpass it are laden with confessions of fulfillment. That you are not truly whole until you have sought to place this echelon beneath you. Many had stared, wide-eyed in reverence of that final step.
I had heard its name once, exchanged in the heated rapture of desire through a bough of black hair and pursed, enraptured lips. In an exasperated, teasing tone she had whispered it, cooing the answer to me with a flick of her hair and a delicate stroke of her tongue.
Her name was Fate…
…And she called it Love.
-Dustin "The Huor" Epkenhaus
