With beads of sweat forming on her brow, La Bateleuer....
Took a step forward and found herself facing a mountainous land, with faint white peak pinnacles, yet others smaller and steep. A formidable land that upon first glance looked incapable of being crossed. Trees were scarce, and the sun bore down scorching the reddish soil.
What am I to do here? I can barely make headway in this terrain Le Bateleuer asked herself, hoisting her pack firmly over her shoulder. Somehow she needed to make her way across, or somewhere. She began the arduous walk, the act of moving and surveying. Realizing as she moved that what looked bleak at first glance was teaming with life. Little insects crawling about, green shrubs pushing out of the ground here and there, as hardy as the soil that bear them. Above, hawks soared at intervals, their screech a cry of determination. Le Bateleuer continued onward.
Slowly the day wore on, weary and exhausting. When night arrived, she stopped at the first green thing she met taller than herself, a wily knotted olive tree. Leaning back against the trunk, she laid down her pack and slumped on the floor, happy to have found a place of rest, even if for a moment. The moon had yet to rise, and so it was that only the stars glittered above. Less than a couple minutes had passed and she was sound asleep, her body and mind surrendering to the aches of the arduous day.
"What do you seek child?" A thundering voice asked.
She was before a walled city, with towers at each corner and a curved gate the size of a small mountain open before her. Inside the walls a city teemed with noise, a cacophony of life.
"What do you seek child?"
She couldn't answer, she was voiceless before the thundering one, whose voice encompassed the landscape. Despite her loss she knew the answer to the question.
Entry.
"I am asking you child, what do you seek?"
Since she couldn't speak, her next option was move, and so she raised her right arm and pointed ahead toward the gate.
"Why?"
That is the perennial question, she thought to herself, why? With her hand still raised she directed her gaze beyond the gate, toward the mountain peaks beyond.
"Ah, I see." And the Ah of this voice vibrated in all the land as if emanating from the ground upward.
She awoke with a jolt, sore but rested. Once again she stood before this reddish land of peaks and dry ground. The sun rising in triumph. She sat with the tree a little while longer, enjoying the coolness from the night still clinging to the bark. She opened her pack, drank water, and took out her tools again. Laying them out under the canopy of the olive tree. She spent a good part of the morning looking and thinking.
When the trunk of the tree was no longer cool, and the shade no longer enough, she put her tools back in the sack and got up. Looking ahead in the direction she had pointed to in her dream, who was the voice and where was the city? With these questions in mind she took one step forward and began walking once more.
