You’ve found some stairs.
It’s an odd place for stairs, considering you’re on a path in the forest. You’re not sure where they lead, but you want to find out.
It’s dark tonight, on your walk. There’s a storm in the air, with loud winds rustling the trees above and electricity crackling in the air. You were gripped by something almost mad as you sat in room, watching the building clouds as the sun set—overwhelmed with the need to go outside, to feel the wet air on your skin and the wind twisting in your hair this way and that. If you didn’t go out, you were sure you’d burst into a million pieces.
So out you went, into the wet, cold air of the night. There’s a lovely path that leads you right to a pretty forest walk—the trees bow over you, scattering sunlight when you walk there during the day. It’s enchanting then, charming and bright. Now, the branches and leaves hang like a shroud, keeping you from the worst of the wind’s gusts.
It hasn’t begun to rain yet, but you know it will soon. You told yourself you’d go back in once it did; you crave the chill of fresh rainfall seeping into your bones. When you go out in the rain, you tell everyone it’s because you want the joy of warming up, but that’s not true. There’s something primal, something ancient in you that loves the rain. Echoes of ancestors who depended on it for their life, perhaps.
All the same, you’re now standing here, at these stairs.
They’re a little steep and slick with moss. Going down them will be a challenge now, but in the rain? Impossible. You could slip and break your neck—or, at the very least, get very bruised up. And let’s say you beat the rain and get down there before it starts bucketing down—what about getting up when the rain does start?
And yet it calls to you. There is something down there, something as ancient as the trees above you, as the part of yourself that craves the rain on your skin. You grip the cold iron of the railing—it’s flimsy, and likely won’t do a thing if you did slip. But you stand on the edge of the stairway, staring down into the darkness below.
If you go down, you could find all sorts of things. Perhaps just another level of the path, but perhaps something more. A new world, a new place, full of the creatures you dream of. Untold adventures, terrifying dangers, all at the base of these stairs. For a moment, it seems wonderful. You could get away from the bore of your everyday life and experience something new.
You start to step, then stop.
Because now you’re certain that there’s more than the mundane at the bottom of this stairway, and it scares you. Because what if you do get spirited away? What if you do enter an adventure you’re not prepared for?
What if you slip and break your neck?
Ultimately, you step back, heart thudding a little more than it should be. It’s likely that there was nothing magical or supernatural about this stairway, but all the same, you feel as if you’ve dodged some fairy trick. You release the railing, backing up to the path right as the first drops of rain fall.
One ancient part of you satisfied as your hair grows wet and heavy and your shirt sticks to your skin. But another is roaring in disappointment. You can still go down. You can still see what’s below.
You can take that step.
But you promised yourself that you’d go back in when the rain started, and now it has. So, swallowing your regret, you turn away from the stairs and head back home. The stairs may be there when you go back, but it won’t lead to where it did tonight, and you grieve that.
But, perhaps, it’s for the best. After all, what if you had slipped?
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