Microfiction: Graves

This is for Sue Vincent’s Thursday #writephoto prompt. I’ll add the link though it like as not won’t work.

 

I have walked this path so many times, as many as the white spring flowers in the grass of the hill, as many as the stars I see framed by the entrance stones. The stone is smooth beneath my feet and and I trace with blind fingers in the dark, the whorls of life carved into the walls, like waves upon the sea. I have no need of eyes to see, nor of fingers to touch. The air sings with the magic of the old ones and guides me to the heart of the hill where I am one with the earth. Until the time comes when my bones will lie with the bones of the seers who paced this path before me, I will walk and watch and tell my stories to who will listen.

The darkness draws me inwards, and the voices grow stronger, louder, painting their pictures of the world beyond the veil. The veil. It falls before my eyes and I falter. The path is smooth but the echoes are disturbing and I hug the wall, reaching for the comfort of the stories etched into the stone. Echoes. Voice, high and strident, float through the air, dispelling the magic. I hold my breath, and the pale translucent forms of the speakers stride towards me. Ghosts of another time, caught like me in the paths of the darkness. They laugh and point at the flat stones of the altar. They carry lights with them, swinging them high to chase the shadows, and like a nightbird, I am caught in the light, and they see me.

There is nowhere to hide, and why should I hide when this is my place, my path to walk? I stand in the path, my palms raised in friendship, but the ghosts back away in a disorderly huddle, tripping and stumbling in their haste to get back to the sunlight. Sunlight. They are of the sunlight, and of a sudden, I realise that I am of the twilight, soon to be of the darkness. I look longingly to the rectangle of sky beyond the door and know that my time has come. The world belongs to the high-voiced ghosts, and I am for the dark.