Wandering in the darkness

The world glowed through the mouth of the cave. After the dead blackness I had grown used to inside, nothing had ever looked so bright to my eyes. As I looked at it, it seemed to positively glow in shades of blue and purple. I looked upwards towards the top of the cave mouth where the purple rays of the sun curled around the lip of rock – almost like a halo. Oh, the glorious sun! My eyes swept lower down and I saw that the sea beat against the rocks down there. The light fell and sparkled on the ripples, sending blue hues of light to dance against the cliff wall. How long had I been wandering in the darkness? Days, maybe? I really could not say. There was no definite way for me to tell the passage of time when I was lost in the dark. But all that I definitely could say is that this is certainly not the place where I went into the caves. Some transition of time and place had definitely taken place since last I saw the light. In fact, I had been wandering in the dark for so long that it was beginning to play tricks on my mind. I began to wonder if there really was something such as time, for if there was, I reasoned, I should not be able to lose track of it so easily and not be able to tell where in it I was, or how much of it has passed me by. But there is no explanation for Time really, I think. I went into a cave in some high sandstone cliffs, and there I wandered, lightless, foodless, hopeless… And now I stood over a village, looking down on it from high up on another cliff. It was winter. The ground was snowed over, the air freezing. It was most definitely not winter where I went in. Where was I? How far had I come to emerge into another world?
I have never seen such colours before. Or maybe I just never noticed how bright the world is. Everything contrasts so beautifully with everything else. Far below my feet, the sea crashes against cliffs made from black rock. It foams and makes spray that flies up high into the air and turns to mist as it reaches its zenith and blows away in the icy breeze. I could see some frozen-over steps leading up from the tiny jetty, up the cliff and away from the dark ocean. There were lights burning in the windows of some of the rough houses that made up the village. These yellow splashes of colour bled to my exposed, bleary gaze and it fills my vision. It seemed to spread across the cold white snow and warms up everything around me. The largest of the houses is apparently an inn, to judge by its many windows. There are icicles hanging from its roof, and for a moment I wondered tiredly why they did not melt in the face of the fire, not thinking that the candles were all behind glass on the windowsills and that the air was bitterly cold compared to the power of the little heat generated by candles.

I studied the village. It was built up a slight slope, with a large building on its summit. This one was not built as crudely as the huts, but appeared to have been lovingly made to last. Just before this building, and framed by one of its great arches, burned a powerful flame on a pillar of stone. The pillar put me in mind of cenotaph monuments and at its peak this great flame pointed proudly towards the sky, burning away the ice and the cold, it seemed to me… it seemed as though it was growing rapidly in size… it expanded horizontally… and reached almost to my feet. I saw ice running into water, huge chunks of ice falling… falling into the sea with a splash. Then I blinked and snapped out of the vision. The flame returned to its normal size. It sent up a pillar of dark smoke that contrasted against the white mountains behind it and beyond the village. Yes, there was still true beauty in life, I thought. The frozen fir trees with their hard, white limbs. The houses with icicles hanging from the thatch. The glowing yellow windows contrasting against the white snow. The crashing, booming ocean. And, finally, the grand building up on the hill, with its impressive architecture and the harsh white mountains behind it, all framed by the edge of my dark cave mouth…

I took a deep breath before starting down.