Adrift, here I stand.
Alone, desolate.
From the horizon, the apertures of skylight.
Foreboding, held urgent from the mountains.
It may have been a crater, or a summit.
Though there is no real cause for a difference.
Traveling, wandering.
In a suit of steel and worn bone.
Each notch and nitch a trophy.
To show for a life unknown.
Into the mouths of the darkest dungeons.
Into the heart of the wettest plains.
The most suffocating snows, the searing drys.
And I stand for a moment, each palace endorsing its own elements.
The darkest dungeons, always with the symphonic drips of water from ceiling to floor.
A scurrying of claws, or teeth, or eyes.
Silent, gliding eyes.
A clank or clink of gold buried deep below, just out of reach of my feet.
A weapon as adverse, as mystifying as the shadows ahead.
Perhaps a sword, or a bow, or a harp.
Though none last as long as I have.
The wettest plains, clad in towering stalks of weed and wheat.
A ploy of purity.
But a decoy, a fraud.
For the realest fears I have ever known wade neck-deep in the moss and mud.
Transporting my breath from invisible to vapor.
As ghastly as me, or my own intent.
The most suffocating snows, empires upon solid stone.
As we have built, us, man.
In time more than a thousand fold as fast.
Man outsources nature.
White upon white, but not I.
Standing out, sordid near the highest heavens.
A black dot on the horizon, rotating, plowing.
My heart the purest of all pure snow, as frigid, as fragile.
The searing drys, the hoarseness of my words.
More cutting than they always have been.
Spitting flames, teeth like stones grinding on wood.
The heat only amplified by my own attire.
Heavier than my eyes, carcasses of once-prancing woodland.
As alive as they ever were before, expanding with my chest.
Dozens of lungs, hundreds of fears, millions of hairs.
All subdued with a simple feather.
Adrift, here I stand.
Alone, desolate.
Amidst the elements once more.
Finally, and for all.
Pity my absence, yet yearn for your own.
There is no trying, only the rate of success on which you fall short.