What Dreams are Made Of_Part Twelve: The Threshold.

They stopped at the head of the vale to survey the stony ground. Grey scars were drawn into the earth and mounds that resembled unmarked graves ruptured amid the rocks. There were trails that led between the low lying hills and extended for miles. Some ran in circles. Others cut complicated patterns without apparent purpose and suddenly stopped.

 Even so, not every sight was somber here. Raised in splendor, within the ruins, were memories of kindness and moments of joy; they bloomed as brightly colored flowers among briars or emerged between snow drifts like isolated miracles.

They walked for a while without a word or a glance until they reached the edge of a dense forest. Recognition froze him. All that had wrought compassion and wrung out terror in him was trapped within a chiaroscuro of bold brush work, forged into the dark woods. A question burned his lips. She looked into his eyes and saw the fear written there.

“The things that have happened in your life, both choices made by you and for you, have not made you who you are. You are who you have always been; your life experience is merely the trail marked on the journey to that discovery.” And with a gesture of her hand they crossed over the charred threshold into the yawning shadows.

To be continued.