She was walking through fire.
Everything in her was burning away - skin, bones, memories, self. She screamed in terror and pain - not the burning but the losing. Some instinct clutched and grasped at the fading knowledge but she couldn’t keep the flames from greedily swallowing every bit of her. She was sure this was her end.
Something in the white hot felt almost malicious, pressing into her mind. You wanted to know, she imagined it said. She had wanted. More than wanted, she had NEEDED. She couldn’t just accept being told that no-one knew. She had insisted on finding out. Insisted on delving for more knowledge. Deeper secrets. And it had cost her everything.
Not quite everything. That thought was from within. She was somehow still there. Every moment it felt as if she was to perish, but somehow she was still walking.
As soon as she realised that, the flames were quelled, and she was completed exposed, suddenly without the warmth of the fire she felt bone chillingly cold. She wasn’t walking flat anymore - she was on a mountain- no, under it - it was crushing her, and she felt every little bit of rock above her, pressing onto her. She tried to move, tried to breathe, tried to do anything at all, but the endless lengths from the root to the peaks were immovable and rigid. She could not walk through this.
She lay there, with what may as well have been the weight of the world on her, for an amount of time that might have been forever. She tried distracting herself, but the flames had left nothing for her to distract herself with - there was no thinking her way out of this, just experiencing, for hours and hours. It was as if the mountains were crushing thought out of her.
Mountains, she recalled, could be different. Some were jagged, some were rolling, some had rides whilst others made spectacular plunges from a jutting peak.
Slowly, her mind asserted itself against the situation. Trapped, she imagined snowflakes. The trickle of water over a minute fall, a crack in the rock that wept. No matter how hard the stone, the water would wear it away eventually. And so she could endure.
As soon as she realised that, the stone above her shuddered, and split, with a sound like a thunderclap that seemed to split the world in two. Light blinded and seared her from above, but the dark waters that had worked through the stone blew into her with a force like a storm and she was swept up in a roiling black current.
Stones and sodden driftwood jabbed into her as she was rolled like a pebble in a river and eventually came to something of a stop. She realised the water was plenty shallow - in fact she could easily stand. But gazing down into it was terrifying- it looked less like water and more like an empty black void, and she gasped, panicking and kicking the water into a foam. She struck out, trying to find an end to the water but it stretched endlessly around her, and as she glanced up she realised the sky was blindingly bright, hurting her eyes and lashing out fiercely when she looked up. She was caught between the darkness and light, eyes screwed up as she struggled between them.
Neither was advancing, and eventually, she calmed herself, legs shaking as she stood, knee high in glossy blackness. It seemed less unfriendly now - in fact, she could see for the first time clearly herself - curious and clever. She looked up and the light showed her herself as well - stubborn, righteous. She stretched for the image and it receded, dancing away as she craned her neck to see closer. She turned to the darkness and the images once again blurred and faded as she lent to see them.
She frowned and got to her knees - and the liquid receded almost to nothing, the thinnest surface on what she could now see was an endless rocky plateau. She stood and the light seemed to retreat away from her - the night sky was revealed. When she craned up, the black water almost swallowed her, creeping up her neck. When she knelt, the light was blinding and crept into the sides of her vision like dandelion seeds.
Her instinct was to leap, or dive, but she realised both would be foolish. Before she even decided to she was walking, her steps heavy through the black water. She walked, even, measured steps. And in the featureless ocean rose a jutting rock, like the bones of the world. She made for it, certainty filling her for the very first time. As she climbed it, the water fell away, replaced with smooth, sturdy stone - and the downy light faded as she climbed higher, its overwhelming brightness fluttering away like butterflies, fading into the stars in a peaceful twilight.
She paused, halfway up the hill, and smiled wryly.
Halfway up would do for now.
