The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey (12 page)

The new day’s journey brought with it a spirited flight down the hill as the intrepid explorers returned back into the valley. Because the previous night’s sleep was spent in deep slumber, both John and Sofia had become so refreshed by the rest that they had acquired that they spent some moments playfully jogging through the grass. Purple flowers, petals spread wide open and leaning into the Savior’s rays, grew in great patches along the path, helping to create an atmosphere of newness and purity once again.

By mid-day John redirected them to the top of an approaching hill from where, he thought, there existed the possibility that they would be able to see their objective. The climb seemed rather mild in contrast to the previous day’s steep hills. Without exerting much of their energy, they arrived at the lookout point ahead of schedule.

Placing his hands above his brow, shielding his eyes from the glare of the Savior, John scanned the rolling hills in the distance.

“I know it’s on one of those two mounds over there,” he said, pointing westward.

Looking intently in the same direction, Sofia followed his lead, but came up equally short in identifying the correct location. Everything looked the same: green trees, green grass, protruding boulders, rolling hills. There was nothing to suggest that the planet had a great, open wound torn from its side, impaled by a crashed machine.

“I’m not seeing anything that looks like a wrecked vehicle,” she said.

“Strange,” John replied, with a perplexed tone. “It has to be over there.”

Pulling the black book out from under his arm and turning to the back cover, he scanned over the details of Mr. Sander’s sketch before returning his eyes to the distant hills.

“I think it’s on the other side of that ridge. Let’s try to circle around it. Maybe we can see it from a different angle.”

Descending back into the valley with a new waypoint waiting at the top of the next hill before them, Sofia asked, “Why don’t we just go straight over there?”

With the interruption to his reading, he replaced the book back under his arm and said, “I don’t know what we’re going to find there. It just seems best if we observe the place from a distance first, just to be sure it’s safe.”

The answer was a reasonable one as far as Sofia was concerned. Resting content with it she allowed herself to be captivated in the moment, observing the feathered creatures of the sky chirping and playing, swooping between the branches of the trees.

As they walked through the knee-high grass in a single file line with John leading the way, John’s nose was, once again, stuck in the little, black book. To pass the time, Sofia began plucking a few flowers from their stems while they brushed against her legs. She slid one behind her ear fully appreciating the fresh, sweet aroma in the air surrounding her as the delicate, purple flora released its fragrance to the wind. With a gentle rub upon her arm of the pistils from the bundle she had gathered, the aromatic splendor had now become an article of clothing: a part of her person.

Upon reaching the base of the final hillside Sofia could see that the flowers were thinning out upon its face, completely fading away into non-existence a few meters below the summit. Uprooting several more clusters, she placed them into the side pockets of her dress. She wanted to continue to smell pretty long after the patches of beauty had passed her by.

The climb to the top was lightly challenging at best. But, as the pinnacle of the hill was now within reach, John could feel his heart beginning to beat with that anxious rhythm that he had experienced several times past on their journey. What would happen if the safe house had been removed without Mr. Sanders’ knowledge of it, perhaps picked up by a Security Force clean-up crew or some other agency of Labor, he thought to himself. Or worse, maybe it was set up as a trap, and they were falling right into it.

With each step his distress was intensified until the solicitude ultimately deteriorated into an incontestable fear. The waypoint was finally reached. As they overlooked the lateral aspects of the two hills diagramed on the map, John came to the conclusion that his apprehensions may have been unfounded.

The sketched image was rather faded due to its age, and John was unsure as to how accurately the crash site had been portrayed by it. Going on the details Mr. Sanders had penciled in, it appeared that the fractured, cylindrical vehicle, having scraped away an extensive, narrow path for itself, was imbedded deep into the hill’s soil, separated at the mid-section, the aft portion resting at its side in an L-shape. At the time that the drawing was crafted, the local vicinity surrounding the unnaturally, freakish structure appeared to have been scorched and exfoliated. The hill, injuriously affected, would have been an extreme contrast to the surrounding landscape. But, from his and Sofia’s current perspective, it became quite apparent that the wounded incline had long been healed over, and was now painted green with the grass and vines, and decorated with the young, narrow saplings that had sprouted up with time.

Concealing away its scars, and along with it the lifeless intruder, it was instantly made obvious and relieving to John’s soul, knowing that the site could only be immediately discernable to those persons pre-possessed with the knowledge of the traumatic past of the planet.

“So, this is where we find the
Food and Shelter
,” John said with a touch of uncertainty and a dash of doubt. “What do you think of it?”

Looking out across the small valley leading up to the one hill that they had spent so many days searching for, Sofia could see that it was not the castle-like structure with golden arches and inviting aura that she had hoped would be awaiting their arrival. In fact, it did not even appear to be accessible without a bit of work on their behalf. From what she was able to gather from their lofty center of observation, it seemed as if the whole arrangement had been blanketed over by the hill itself in an attempt to disguise its hideous lesion from the Savior above. But, she concluded, this was their final place of rest. They were being granted a permanency that they never could have thought possible before today.

“It’s…” she said hesitantly, “… different.”

As they reached the base of their lookout hill, John and Sofia entered into the thicker trees of the valley. The realization that they were finally reaching the end of their pilgrimage made it difficult for them to cease with their giddy laughter.

What began as John’s earnest desire to travel eastward, to seek the land of the rising Savior, was detoured by the Unseen Forces that govern the events of the ages. Leading them instead towards the place where the Savior settles at the end of His daily march across the sky, Providence had given John an odd, but comforting, message, informing him that he did not have quite as much control over his and Sofia’s destinies as he once thought he
had.

The events of the past week seemed but years ago. The world that they had left behind was as equally far, if not farther, from their minds as they were in distance to that terrible City. Moving his hands through a drape of dangling vines, John proceeded to push them aside, allowing Sofia to squeeze through the narrow opening between the trunks of the trees.

“Oh, John. Look,” she said, pointing towards something just out of his view on the other side of the tree line.

Hurrying through the natural threshold, John desired to see what had caught Sofia’s fancy so intensely. The world beyond was quite different than the lush green forest that they had been traversing. The grass was somewhat darker in color, almost emerald in appearance, and much shorter in length, while the trees, stubbier and relatively narrow in diameter when compared to the thick trunks of their older brethren, were thinly spread and far from maturity. Completely passing through, John let the curtain of vine fall back into place behind them.

Finding themselves standing in the center of the monumental channel that the flying craft had carved into the land before skidding to a halt upon the hillside, there was a sense of minuteness and inadequacy that befell the two of them that not even the tallest of hills, nor the expansive views of land that they had witnessed spreading across the planet, had been able to achieve.

Expanding for hundreds of meters ahead lay the unnaturally widened path leading up to the two portions of the vine and moss covered vehicle. Two mounds of soil protruded from the edges of the trench, forming fantastic walls of grass decorated with various colors of flowers, as if to form a majestic walkway for two weary travelers. The two halves of the air machine were massive in height and breadth, even at such a far distance. Their diameters were of relative length comparable to the medium sized buildings of
Labor.

Pieces of metal debris, great and small, littered the landscape, creating an entirely novel world-within-a-world feel. Walking with a reduced pace in order to gather in the oddly formed environment by way of the many senses upon which it was affecting, they noticed that even the sounds emitting from the local area had a unique aural impression. The chirping of the tiny, grass-dwelling creatures was of a high intensity, whereas there had been only minor sounds generated by them in all the land of which the two had journeyed over. There were unique and colorful flying creatures, which appeared to sing among the trees. The flowers were of a deeper purple, almost to the point of blackness, and held a slight bend towards the Savior’s direction. Glowing, flying insects buzzed above the grass with illuminated bodies that sparked in intermittent flashes.

They had been directed to this magical place by a merciful hand. And the desire to give thanks to someone, perhaps Mr. Sanders himself, seemed in order. But, neither Mr. Sanders, nor anyone else for that matter, was available to receive their gratitude. It was just Sofia and John, alone but happy.

The towering cylinders, cloaked in vines and thick green over-growth which had seeped interiorly from between its cracks and punctured skin, dripped light-reflected dust from high above as John made the first step inside. The heavy creaking of the metallic floor shifting under his weight reverberated off the walls and into the inner chambers beyond his visual realm. A partition, designed to block further exploration into the deeper aspects of the vehicle’s body, was thwarted in its plan by its damaged, metal door that had apparently broken off during the catastrophic event. It was now solidly lying flat upon the floor, allowing access into the blackened room before him.

Stacked in an orderly fashion against the craft’s rounded walls, just outside the doorway were several small crates with the words
Golden World Foodstuffs
and
Red Lights, Battle
. The lids, previously broken off, had been lightly reset to allow for the ease of removal. Motioning to Sofia, who was peering in through the drapery of vine behind him, to continue to remain outside the vehicle, John lifted the lid off of one of the boxes. Reaching inside, he pulled out a cardboard case. It had the words
Candy Bars
written over it in a wide, bold
font.