The Golden Desires (3 page)

4 ~ THE TEST OF A FRIENDSHIP

After breakfast Adrian walked to
the place where he usually met up with Isabella. There he waited, feeling
strangely nervous at the prospect of simply meeting his lifelong friend, even
though he had done that hundreds of times. He hoped that by having spoken to
her the night before he had not frightened her or made her so nervous about his
words that she would avoid him.

But he needn't have worried. This morning, just as
yesterday, and on so many days before that, he saw her approaching him with a
smile on her face once again. It wasn't the same smile as usual, but it was a
smile nonetheless, and it was definitely directed at him.

"You have beaten me here this morning, Adrian.
This is so unlike you," she said, instantly teasing him upon her approach
to where he was standing. "What mischief have you been up to, to have you
standing here before I have arrived here this fine morning? And if you are so
early today, why did you not come and dine with me for breakfast?"

He smiled at her and simultaneously felt his body
relax and his breath ease out slowly and deeply. Late into the night he had
been so worried about the possibility of having overstepped a friendship
boundary and her being inaccessible to him today, but now it was very clear to
him that he should have known better. She had never acted in such a way, even
when they were children and she would think he was not being nice to her. No
matter what, she was - and had always been - there for him as a trustworthy
friend.

"I didn't want to miss you," he said
with a sheepish grin on his face, making her laugh.

"I keep telling you that I will wait for you!
When will you ever believe me about that?" she asked, the two of them
laughing softly together now. "Come on. I have to go and get apples for
Cook Mary -
green
apples!" she said vaguely and he knew what was
next. "And something else … hmm, I can't quite remember what it was but I
am sure it will come to me when I get down to the garden."

Adrian laughed out loud at her again. So many
things about where they lived … and the way they lived … never changed, and
made him wish for desperate for
something
to change. But this - this morning
meet and listening to her not remember what she was supposed to get for the
cook of the morning -
that
he knew he would never tire of. It was one of
the things that set him up in a good mood for the rest of each and every day.
That and looking at her beautiful face that almost always had the happiest
smile on it.

"Have you asked or said anything to anyone
about what we talked about last night?" he asked her when they both
relaxed from their laughter.

"Which aspect are you speaking of, Adrian? I
seem to recall we talked about two equally important things last night."

"Just the first one, Isabella. I won't
pressure you for the second. If you reach a place where you want to talk to me
about the possibility of you and I pairing, I will be here for you. For now,
let us not talk of it again. Your friendship is too important to me," he
said and she looked intently at him while nodding her head. "So, the other
- the warmth of the ground."

"No, I did not and will not speak of it to
anyone. Did you?"

Adrian shook his head and spoke noticeably quieter
and closer to her.

"No, but I want to go out again and walk
further tonight. Will you join me? After dinner?"

"Oh Adrian, I don't know. You know we are not
supposed to go out at night. And two nights in a row? What if we put it off
till tomorrow?"

"No! I want to explore
now
, but I can
explore alone. You do not have to come with me. It is quite alright."

They approached the fork in the path where they
would go their separate ways. He moved closer to her and just reached out to
touch her arm lightly, a move that did not startle or concern her.

"I will see you at dinner?" he asked and
she nodded and smiled at him before turning away and beginning her daily trek
to the large garden and orchard.

5 ~ THE NEARING

Trent had crossed another mountain
and knew he was getting weaker now. Although he was eating enough to sustain
himself in a usual stationary life in the city, the lesser amount of food
combined with the excessive walking - particularly uphill walking - was resulting
in a negative equation in energy levels, and he could feel his clothes getting
looser. But now he was at the top of the mountain that stood directly before
the one he wanted to get to.

As
he reached the summit of this mountain he quickly took out his binoculars and
looked in the direction of where he thought the structure must be.

At
first he did not see it and felt a deep thud in his heart at the discovery that
he had must have been seeing things and there was nothing there after all.

But
then, looking again after a few minutes, he realized that it
was
there.
It was so high that some light cloud had been sitting in front of it, but that
cloud had passed and now the structure
was
visible -
very
visible.

He
sat down on a large rock with force, his legs trying to give way as his brain
tried to argue with him that he was still seeing an optical illusion of some
kind. Through the binoculars he still couldn't make out exactly what it was but
as he was getting nearer it was starting to look like … a castle. Large, high
and broad with incredibly sturdy looking walls that appeared to be made of grey
brick.

But
that made no sense! Castles were from the days of medieval kings and queens.
And they were in
England
,
France
and other parts of
Europe
. They were never
here
.

He
quickly considered leaving immediately and trying to go straight to the valley
and up the other side without stopping anymore, but knew he couldn't do that.
It was already possibly a mission that he would likely not survive, being this
far away from civilisation now, but to try and walk at night when he could not
see his footing properly would be more than irresponsible.

Instead,
he made his way down to the sheltered side of the mountain he was on and set up
camp again. It would only be a few more days and he would be there. But what
then? Did the grandeur of claiming an unknown and unheard of castle seem in any
way appealing to him? It was a useless thing to seek, he knew, but regardless
his curiosity about the structure was already piqued and he could not give up
now. If nothing else, it might provide him with some shelter for a few nights …
enough to regain his strength before attempting to head home again.

Home.

Where
was that, anyway? Where did he belong in the entire scheme of the whole world? The
whole
planet
. If he really loved his 'home' so much, why had
he felt so suffocated and desperate to leave?

6 ~ THE DREAM

Isabella woke abruptly from a night
vision she had been having. She did not often have visions of the night but
this one was vivid - far more vivid than she had ever experienced before. She
took a moment to think about it before it disappeared from her mind - so often
she woke with something she was visualising but then as the day wore on the
memory of it dissipated until she could not remember what she had seen in her
night vision at all.

But this one was different. It was a man. He was
walking toward her. Isabella could see that he was not of her people. He was
from somewhere else. She could tell that from the clothing he wore and the
things he carried. He was the first person she had ever met - had ever
seen
- who was unfamiliar to her.
New
to her.

In her dream she walked toward him, and saw him
walk straight up to her. His hair was dark and short, and he did not have long
facial hair like the men in her village. His facial hair was so short, like he
cut it as the people of her village occasionally cut the hair on their heads
sometimes.

He held out his hands to her, and when she looked
down she saw yellow in her hands. Although she did not know what it was, she
could feel it warming her, making her smile. She felt a need to give it to him,
to warm him, seeing how cold he seemed.

Why did he seem so cold? They were never cold here
in the village. That was what was going through her mind when she awoke so
suddenly, experiencing her very first feeling of an extreme chill running
through her body.

7 ~ THE ARRIVAL

Trent stood before the massive
walls. It was whilst standing before such a structure that he finally
comprehended how big it was. As he stood at the base of one grey brick wall and
looked upward, he had to crane his neck back a long way to be able to follow
the line of sight upward and see the sky.

He reached forward and touched the brick,
expecting it to be frozen at this height, where he was starting to feel the
effect of the air lessening. Instantly he was surprised that the wall was not
only not frozen to the touch … but almost
warm
. He looked upward again.
The sun was out so that must have been the provider of the warmth. Of course it
was. Sun beating down on a brick structure would always enable the brick to
absorb the heat and hold it for probably the whole day. Yes, that explained it.

He placed a marker where he initially stood and
then started to walk along the edge of the wall. From where he was he could not
see any kind of gate or doorway, but there had to be one. Otherwise how would
it have been built? Unless … it was built from the outside in, and the builders
never left…

But even if that were the case, those men would be
long perished, given how old the structure looked.

"What mysteries do you hold?" he asked
out loud, to no-one listening.

Except that although he did not know it, someone,
in their subconscious,
had
heard.

~~~~~

He seemed to walk for hours - certainly the sun
was beginning its journey downward again and he was now getting considerably
colder. When he had started walking around the structure's perimeter, he had
purposely tied a marker to a nearby tree so that he would know when he was at
the right point to start heading back again. But he did not think he had even
started to make even an indentation on the entire perimeter yet.

The question now was, what to do. He could make
his way part way down the mountain to find some shelter for the night, and then
come back the next day. Or he could huddle against one of these walls in the
hope that it would shelter him somewhat. He didn't know how long the sun's
warming would still emanate from the brick walls, but it was certainly nice
standing up against them for the moment.

He looked up at the sun and judged which would be
the most sheltered side of the mountain to rest on for the night, and then
continued his skimming of the perimeter for a bit further before tying a second
marker and walking down the mountain a short way until he found a more
sheltered spot to rest up.

From where he camped he could see the structure
through the flora, and he was invigorated by having found it. At least now he
could rest and be sure that it was real.

Now he just had to find a way
into
it.

~~~~~

Very early the next morning, with the sun only just
starting to begin its very first stage of starting to rise in the sky, Trent
woke with the knowledge that he felt warm. Wrapped in his sleeping bag inside
the tiny pup tent, night after night, he had not had any nights where he felt
too cold, but the warmth he was currently subjected to was different. It almost
felt like a created heat … a manmade heat, as if reaching him from a heater or
a heating appliance such as an electric blanket.

Enjoying the warmth, he moved himself so he could
view the structure again, fearing for a moment that it might not be there -
that it might have been a vision of imagination after all. But when he looked,
it was definitely still there, and unavoidable in being seen by him from the
close distance he was from the walls.

He climbed out and quickly ate, noticing he was
now on the last dregs of the dried food he had brought with him. It was an
expectation that he wouldn't -
couldn't
- endure a return trip to his
home city without finding sustenance, and he knew the likelihood of that was
grim. It was now a well accepted expectation that he would not survive this
life much longer but he was at peace with that. He had set out from
civilisation wanting to simply find peace, and he certainly had found it.

But amongst the resolve that his time on Earth was
coming to an end, was a determination and excitement to explore where he was,
to try and learn as much as he could about the structure before him.

He packed up his things into his tramping pack
once more and walked up to the point of the wall where he had set the marker
the evening before. From there he continued walking along the wall perimeter,
desperate to find the entry point.

He must have walked for a good hour or so before
suddenly he leaned on a portion of the wall that was currently bathed in
sunlight. It was not the first part of the wall he had leaned on today - the
warmth coming from it was soothing and he was finding himself more and more
frequently desiring to let its emanating heat engulf him in order to make him
feel recharged and able to continue on.

At this particular point though, as he leaned in
to once again enjoy the heat, something different happened, and all of a sudden
he found himself … on the
other
side of the wall.

At first he didn't realize what had happened. He
felt the fall, but it wasn't until he refocused that he could see that he was
not in the same place.

He looked around him and for as far as he could
see were the remnants of buildings, broken as if they had gone through a war
and had suffered the horror of bombing.

Trent staggered to his feet, feeling a combination
of excitement and fear inside of him, as he looked around. So many questions
came into his mind about the strange place but the one that called out to him
most loudly was, 'what happened to this place?'

Before he walked forward he placed a third marker
at the point where he had come through. Even looking at that spot on the wall now
he could not see any doorway, but he tentatively placed his hand on it and felt
the absence of the solid wall that he could see. It was like some kind of
magic, covering the entry point. A hologram? A portal?

He turned and began his exploration, but although
he could see that there must have been buildings here at some point, the sight
of rubble far outweighed the success of any one building having survived.

The massive space that he could see seemed to go
on for miles and he realized the extent of which it must have been more than
just a castle, as he had originally guessed it would be. It was more like an
entire township - an entire land within a land.

His curiosity piqued, he now felt full of
excitement and alertness, so began walking around all of the distinct outlines
of where individual buildings must have once stood in a long past period of
time.

The other thing he was so aware of, was that he
was warm. He knew at a logical level how high he was currently on top of a
mountain, and yet his body and the air around him seemed truly warm. It was
still early in the morning and the sun was hardly up, so he couldn't account
for it being the result of the sun. No, there was something more going on here,
in this place. Something … magical.

He walked further, trying to visualise what the
layout of the buildings must have been like, and found himself standing in
front of what appeared to be a pile of rubble far greater in size than any
other he had yet passed.

As he stood in front of it, seeing large parts of
the rubble, he tried in his mind to put them back together like a jigsaw
puzzle, so he could imagine what the structure had been.

As he stood there he became aware of a new feeling
start to come over him - that of not only not being alone, but also of … being
watched
.

He stood where he was, facing the same direction, excited
and yet fearful of what he would see when he turned around.