Feather

He clung to the rocks, even as the effort of holding on was harder than clinging to life itself.

With every breath, another effort… another groaning and mournful pull, another inch of wall surpassed, with no idea of how much left to go.

They said he couldn’t do it, they said he could die trying; he was certainly willing to die proving them wrong.

Freedom, he thought, was often taken for granted, especially by those who enjoy it most. But take a dream away from a man and you’ll find out just how hard he’s willing to fight to get it back.

In the darkest recesses of his memory he remembered. He remembered the sun on his face and wind in his hair, he remembered the feel of soft grass on his feet. He yearned for that feeling as he climbed his way out of the darkest hole in this earth.

How much would he have to climb, he did not know. The only thing he was sure of was that he could not stop pushing, because the moment he did, it would be like giving up. So, he pushed.

His legs in agony, his arms as though on fire, his mind tired and almost ready to quit. But his soul… his soul was that of a warrior, his should was not about to let his mind, his arms or his legs take away the only thing that no one else could take away from him. His resolve.

Almost by surprise his hands felt something other than rocks. Without realizing what he had done, he had made it to the top. And every pain, every tear, every effort he had made in his climb materialized in the simplest, yet most powerful of gestures. A smile.

With a final effort he lifted himself over the edge and tumbled onto his back. The air was no longer damp and uninviting; it was fresh and full of promise. Even through the absolute darkness that surrounded him he could tell he was now outside, in the freedom of the night.

He sat next to the entrance to the well of forgiveness and watched the sun rise in the east. His eyes hurt from the light that he had forgotten and his mouth watered with the infinite smells brought by the breeze. He sat still, in absolute contemplation of all the things that had happened since he fell down…

He remembered being young and curious, full of hope and dreams, ready to take on the world and become something never seen on the face of the planet. But one misstep sent him tumbling down the well of forgiveness and once falling, he was never able to stop.

To the bottom of the well he crashed, and in the absolute desolation of this horrible place he found that he was not alone. A staggering number of souls had been captured by the well, and now kept them prisoners.

The well whispered in his ears “you are not worthy” and he believed. Oh! terrible destiny, for how long did he believe. How did they all believe that down in the well of forgiveness, the voices that speak from the darkness are your only friends.

Old he grew, trapped in the well, forgetting his desires, his dreams, his destiny. Feeding them all to the well, where they were never returned to him.

But one day, a single feather fell into the well of forgiveness and touched his brow. How did it get here, he didn’t know; but with a single touch it seemed to awake something inside of him, something that had been asleep for too long.

He began to climb; old and wasted away as he was, this became the most difficult of tasks. But he never gave up, for the feather had returned something to him that he had lost when he fell. The feather had given him back a notion, a small piece of his dreams.

As the sun rose higher into the morning he sat and contemplated his fate. He had no idea where to go or what to do. The world was old and new at the same time, but his memories were broken, pieces of an age ago, like the memories of another mind, like valuable antiques lent to another and he had no idea how to get them back.

Suddenly one came to him, the memory that had started it all. His dream was back in his recollections at last, and everything made a sort of sense that was both beautiful and magnificent. His dream had always been to become free and unencumbered, to transform into something never seen before, to rise above all others in a paroxysm of freedom that was hitherto unknown.

He had learned to become a bird.

He had flown here and there, every day achieving new heights, every day understanding a new trick, every sunlit morning gaining one more feather upon his skin.

The day the well of forgiveness captured him, just before he could fall, he released a single feather into the air and then he was sucked away into the dark places of the world.

It had been his own feather, falling down so long after him that had helped him remember.

It goes to show, he thought as he finally stood up and stretched his wings, that in this terrible world, help will often come from the most unlikely places. Even if one of those places is from within yourself.