The sun was bright but gave off no real heat. The air was thin, even though his body was in great shape, the lack of oxygen was getting to him. Of all the people to send he was given this place to go to. The clouds below him drifted through the crags and valleys of the daunting mountain range around him. He turned his attention up and moved up, higher into the heavens.
He was reminded of an ant climbing up a large rock. Was the ant aware of the true size of the boulder he was crawling on? Relatively, the boulder would be just as daunting to the ant, as the Himalayas was to him. Was he just an ant crawling up a boulder in a field? Looking around him it was easy to lose one’s self in such thoughts. He really didn’t know where he was going, or how to find what he was looking for. The ruins of an abandoned city that had been nothing but legend and ruble for over a thousand years. What was Ansuya expecting him to find?
He had been doing this for the better part of two weeks now and the sprawling crags of the Himalayas had yet to reveal any of her secrets to him. Maybe he had been going about this all wrong.
He looked up into the heavens and to no God in particular asked out loud, “I’d really appreciate a little help here. Once I find the ruins I’m looking for, I promise I’ll never bother you again.” His plea was met with silence. He hadn’t really expected an answer anyway, but something would have been nice, anything. “Yeah, thanks for the help.”
He spent the better part of the rest of the day scrambling up a particularly nasty climb, half of which was almost shear vertical crags. He hadn’t been climbing in a while and even though he had gotten some practice in his valley, the dizzying heights he found himself now made him acutely aware of the elemental force that some people called, ‘gravity’.
As he finally pulled himself to the top of the rise, exhausted he rolled onto his back and stared up at the quickly darkening sky. His lungs tried to fill with air but there was no oxygen to be had. He gasped and tried to breathe slowly. He was just able to pull his pack toward him and open a small oxygen tank and breathe in the sweet contents.
As he breathed deeply, he realized that the climb had bloodied his knuckles and ripped his pants in several places. The climb had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit and all he could do or care about at that moment was breathe oxygen from the small tank. When he had finally caught his breath, he was able to look around at the nearby landscape, studying what his effort had borne him.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
This part of the mountain range was pretty flat and stretched on for what seemed like miles. For the first time in a long time, he was able to walk on flat ground where his altitude didn’t raise with every step.
The sky was giving way to black as the bright oranges and reds of the sunset were being chased away by the coming night. His eyes accustomed themselves quickly to the deepening darkness around him. It was usually at this time where he had been unable to continue his search amidst the sharp climbs of the mountains and had been forced to slip back into the Whyte Plain and go back to the place in Agra where the rest of the Mountain refugees had taken shelter among Ansuya’s people and country of India.
But tonight he had good solid level ground under his feet, and he was reasonably comfortable with his surroundings so he stayed and continued deeper into the strangely flat space in which he found himself.
He walked for long minutes, the bright stars giving him light enough to see by. He had gone only a half mile or so before a radiant full moon began to rise above the peaks to the east. He had never seen the moon so full, or so close before. He had learned so much since he had foolishly worshipped her as his mother. But for some reason he found himself kneeling before her soft white glory and lowering his head. Her power did not hold sway over his form as she once had, but he had to admit the urge to change into his more naturally accepted form was too great and he shifted.
The world exploded in sight and sounds that even his attuned human side to his Shape shifter senses just could not hope to perceive. His werewolf eyes and ears allowed him to see such detail, his ears picked up those minute variances in wind sound pitch and speed as it passed through the peaks and valleys around him, allowing him to listen to nature’s most beautiful and rare symphony, with music that sang of time, space, but also history. The wind told the story of the mountains around him and he had a front row seat to the awesome opera around him.
His sight, aided by the full power of the moon herself, he was able to run. His eyes now picked up details that his human eyes would have missed. There were chips in the stones, animal like in their presence, but his werewolf eyes told a story of tools, primitive but strong, and the decades of time, wind, and rain had worn down the traces of those left that had come long before him.
He followed the clues. The wind sang to him as he searched and ran and sniffed. His werewolf form was most comfortable at night and this was all very familiar to him. It brought up memories of the Old Grey and his pack back in his valley and he thought, not for the first time, about the pack he had been forced to leave. His family he had abandoned, had they survived? Were they alright? Had they moved on from his valley, or had they been hunted?