(no subject)
There's a certain sense in which a beginning is the most constricted place possible. Everything has to be there. The closer you get to beginning places, the more you feel it, the stillness of all things waiting to happen.
They leave the hired car where the road ends. Greece may have beefed up its infrastructure for the Athens Olympics, but there are places left that can only be reached on foot. It's beautiful country: spare and weathered, all bare mountainsides and wide plains. The longer they walk, the more the chill of winter slips behind them. The light turns orange, the sky milky; the season becomes less sure of itself, until all there is is strange terrain full of impossible angles and great pits in the ground.
"Come see beautiful Boetia," Prometheus quips, pausing at the edge of a great clay field. "You feel like you're in a Chuck Jones cartoon yet?"
Charlie has shed her jacket; she hugs it closer, just staring at the land. "This is where you did it?" she says softly.
He nods. "Me and my brother," he replies, quietly.
She peers out at the flat expanse and the ragged shadows that slash it. "Where?"
He shakes his head. "That's not important." His eyes stay distant, and wherever that thousand-mile stare lands, Charlie can't see it. He looks up an instant later, and the unnamed thing in his face is gone. "Come on," he says, and holds out his hand.
There is a shelter down where he needs it to be. It's closed, it's close, but it's space, and it's open. It's where they'll both begin.
They leave the hired car where the road ends. Greece may have beefed up its infrastructure for the Athens Olympics, but there are places left that can only be reached on foot. It's beautiful country: spare and weathered, all bare mountainsides and wide plains. The longer they walk, the more the chill of winter slips behind them. The light turns orange, the sky milky; the season becomes less sure of itself, until all there is is strange terrain full of impossible angles and great pits in the ground.
"Come see beautiful Boetia," Prometheus quips, pausing at the edge of a great clay field. "You feel like you're in a Chuck Jones cartoon yet?"
Charlie has shed her jacket; she hugs it closer, just staring at the land. "This is where you did it?" she says softly.
He nods. "Me and my brother," he replies, quietly.
She peers out at the flat expanse and the ragged shadows that slash it. "Where?"
He shakes his head. "That's not important." His eyes stay distant, and wherever that thousand-mile stare lands, Charlie can't see it. He looks up an instant later, and the unnamed thing in his face is gone. "Come on," he says, and holds out his hand.
There is a shelter down where he needs it to be. It's closed, it's close, but it's space, and it's open. It's where they'll both begin.