Last, first step

This journey has been thought-provoking, my day like nothing I have ever experienced. My senses have come alive. I feel the anticipation, the heightened tingling that crawls across my skin. Before me the spires of my prison rise and seem as formidable as an ocean. These sentinels, these bars that hinder my life shall soon give way to the open vistas of my mind.

I leave my possessions in good hands, my neighbors duly charged with the safekeeping of what my life had been, a shadow of what it may become. The fields that have kept me prisoner by their very nature have also sustained me. My neighbors have become my family as I have none to speak of in my current circumstance. Long ago did I abandon the closeness of hearth and home for peacefulness in solitude. Perhaps it is this choice that has conspired with my dreams to lead me to the foothills of the Sirris in the belly of the Middle Valley.

Behind the bars of towering oak and ash lie the peaks of the east, the Sirris Mountains, the curtain that gives way to each dawn I have seen during my life. Yet they have also cast their shadow upon my world as they lay a blanket upon the outside. I strain to see the heights they amass yet within their boundaries I may slide easily between their ranks and slip the bonds that tie me to this valley.

I step forward with mounting anticipation as thick bark and knotted brambles rise up to keep me imprisoned. But I will not be bowed. These towers step away from my advance to keep me held within, their backs to the slides of stone and rock that have tumbled down the mountains, their river adding yet another layer to overcome. My will is to break their hold and spirit my soul away from the wall they form. One by one I pass by them, soldiers all to the end. I extend my hand and brush the craggy surface of a majestic oak. It shall impede my gaze no longer. I suddenly feel the sun break across my face and feel the unhindered breeze wash across my shoulders. My sentinals, my prison melts beneath the light of day from the outside world as I step across its boundary and into a new adventure, an adventure of a lifetime.