He felt a calm here that he had never felt in any other place, spiritual or not, when he lived among his fellow humans and he was not going to waste any more time contemplating the short comings of the society of man. They would rather hang each other over words and interpretations rather than try to understand each other. No, this place could never exist anywhere other than here and for the first time in his life, William knew that he had found something in this world worth living for, worth caring about, and worth trying to protect. He knew it as sure as he knew his own heartbeat. This place was acceptance, acceptance of each other’s beliefs and each other’s values. Something worth fighting for.
He turned around and leaned on the cool stone as he rested his head on his arm.
“What we do in life, echoes in eternity,” William intoned to himself.
This place was real and the values it represented were real. Here in the bowels of an underground city, under a dormant volcano, he finally understood what it was like to be home. This was his home, and he would die, if necessary, to protect it. There was a serenity here that was hard to dismiss. He felt calm in his solitude and he breathed in deeply. He filled his lungs with the clean air of this place, the slight, lingering scent pleasing to his senses. He held in the air for a moment then, closing his eyes, he released it and with it all the tension he didn’t know he had was released. The silent weight was eased from his shoulders, and he was able to stand up a little straighter. He smiled to himself as the pressure of his burden was set down.
Lighter in both mind and spirit he walked past the strange elephant man and continued along the curvatures of the corridor, stopping at each alcove he came across and studying the statue inside. Usually there was only one figure but sometimes there were two or three. The Figures ranged from friendly smiling faces to sad and forlorn, from the classically masculine and beautiful, to somewhat grotesque and strange. He stopped at every alcove and studied each statue with the same care that he had placed when looking at the first two. He noted the detail of the carvings, the color of the statue, whether the color of the stone they were carved from was grey, white, gold, colored or plain. He made his way down the corridor. Not rushing and not caring about time.
He came upon a statue that he recognized. The boyish masculinity of the young twenty-year-old was hard to mistake. The lyre in the man’s hand was proof enough and just to make sure he checked the carvings below the landing of the alcove. There, much as he anticipated, carved in a classical style of straight bold letters was the name, ‘Apollo’. His previous assumption had been correct it seemed. With this one statue he was proven right that this place was some kind of temple, a place to worship the Gods. He turned around to take in the corridor and contemplated all the unseen alcoves he had passed by.
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He followed an abrupt blind twist in the folded walls and came upon a cul-de-sac ending of the corridor. This space was lot wider than the rest of the corridor. The opening widened out into a comfortable building sized space. The walls of the space had been expanded. The only reason he thought this was the vibrant wild waves and curves of the corridor walls were less pronounced here. The space was more oval shaped than round and in the middle was a single dais. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said it was an alter but it didn’t jut up from the floor like any alter he had ever seen. It was more of a stone slab without legs. The edges were smooth and rounded and the top of the grey stone was just as polished as the walls of his bedroom. Behind the dais he saw a figure on its knees. He jerked back in a motion of pure reflex that surprised even him.
“No need to give yourself a heart attack, kiddo. I have been here for quite some time.”
“What do you mean?”
“No need to save face with me, William. It happens to the best of us from time-to-time. Even I, who have had a lot more practice than you, have been startled by someone coming in through my door.” The voice was aged but feminine.
William slowly pushed himself away from the corridor exit and took a few hesitant steps toward the kind, aged voice. He recognized the voice from somewhere, but he really couldn’t put his finger on where or how he knew this person. For some reason pictures of his grandma came to mind. He shook those ideas away. His grandmother had been a smoker and if her voice had ever had this light quality to it, it had been years gone before he had ever been born.
“Well, are you going to just stand there or are you going to help me?”
William was very confused, and his mind was still trying to place where he knew this voice from. He made his way toward the kneeling figure at the dais. The older woman had a large basket and had pulled out more than just a few jars and containers.
The kneeling figure stopped what she was doing and folded her hands in her lap. She looked up at him and in a grace that belied her age she rose from the ground as fluidly as a ballerina, or an ice skater. She stood up without any of the fuss that old people so often complain about. Her white hair capped head reached about the middle of his face. If he had to guess he would say she was around five foot four, or five foot five inches.