Reality is what you make of it.
The veils of reality part before me as I run.
Fog swirls around a pointed rock on my left, The sound of snuffling comes from behind the rock.
The smell of rain hangs in the air.
Shifting, the fog breaks and the sun is brassy and small in the distance. More rocks litter the ground thrusting up through a volcanic plain.
I run faster, and the clouds scud across the sky like stop motion photography. Dust fills the air, it's acrid leaving a bitter tang in my nostrils.
My heart thunders in my chest, the sound must be audible. The brassy sun spins down into the horizon.
A gibbous moon rises behind my left shoulder. The ground gives way to a gravelly plain. A blue shooting star streaks across the sky, and another and another.
The colors change, the stars are bright green pinpricks in the night.
The gravel gives way to sand and sedge grass. Sweat pours off my body. Reaching over my shoulder I adjust my sword, loosening it in the sheath.
The moon explodes and metors rain down behind me on the recently quitted plain. The smell of ozone fills the air.
A red giant rises to my left taking up most of the sky. I push harder, riding the thrust of power for all it's worth.
A gentle hill covered in more and more grass as I climb. A fairy ring of purple mushrooms at the top.
I start down the other side toward a standing stone, a lone sentinel of a forgotten age. I turn right at the stone keeping the hill between me and the heat of the star.
It's like an equation, I add and subtract things around me solving for the place of my desire.
My head begins to ache near the back of my skull, soon I will have to rest.
The grass is well manicured the sun has shrunk to it's normal size and color behind the hill.
A tree in the distance, and then another. Soon I am running through an evergreen forest. The smells of fresh pine and cedar surround me.
I slow a bit and breathe deeply of the fresh air. The trees get steadily larger as i push on giving way to beech and then to oaks.
Birds protest my passage. A white stag leaps from my left and runs down a trail to my right. I turn and follow him, he disappears around a bend.
In the distance hounds bay in pursuit of the stag. The underbrush gets thicker muffling their sound and the trail turns upward.
Soon I can no longer hear them, the forest becomes still. The trail becomes more rocky as I climb. Above me I can see huge boulders covered in moss.
I enter a series of switchbacks, a small stream runs alongside the trail.
Leaving the trail I follow the stream to a small glade and pause for a second.
Looking around at the tumbled moss covered rocks I smile. crossing to the spring in the center of the glade I kneel and drink deeply.
The water is sweet and so cold it makes my teeth ache. Splashing some on my face I rid myself of some of the desert grime still stuck to me.
After refilling my canteen I rest with my back against a rock to take my lunch. A dried apple and a peanut butter sandwich.
The ache in my head subsides slowly while I refresh myself. The power to shape reality can be exhausting, I have to pace myself.
This is not my world, but it is one of my favorite places to visit. I wait a while hoping to see her.
She will not show herself to me though, I am not of the blood.
Rising I drink from the spring again and begin to make my way down to the sea and the city there. Mayhap they will help me, or perhaps not.
I jog down a different hill than the one i climbed. moving now through an old growth redwood forest.
The trees get thicker and older the farther I go until eventually I am surrounded by towering sequoias.
The shadows are deep but nonthreatening.
I catch sight of a mountain rearing to my left through a break in the trees. Just a glimpse and it is gone.
The vale around me is quiet, the animals protest my passage in silence. The undergrowth fades out, leaves rustle underfoot at my passage.
A squirrel chatters somewhere off to my right.
I have arrived at the world of my desire. Releasing my hold on reality I begin the hike across the valley toward the sea.
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