Alithos Anesti.

"Hello?"

"Hello?!"

"Hello!... Can you hear me?" 

Echoes. Echoes.

Glassy hard sounds, like drips on solid sheening marble rock. A drop, a pause, a drop again. Rhythmical pulse of this hardened hill. "Drip. Drip.... Drip" I stand, listening. Waiting for the next drip as comforting as certainty. "Drip."  I sigh, relieved that the mountain continues. The universe, no matter my part in it, continues at a steady drip; I get to experience it at this point in time, as a geologist studies a rock core. "Drip", and then a breath from the lungs, icy around the edges yet eventually warm as it envelops me in its path. The wind rushes by. Heading, one assumes, to an exit from this subterranean gloom. This Stygian pit. For air does not depressurize for simply no reason.  As surely as there is a drip due to relative viscosities, water tension, gravity and time, physics prevails to relay gases from areas of high pressure to low, sweeping anxious teenagers in underground cavern as they barrel on towards their destiny, dancing around his cheeks, ruffling his hair, whistling seductively in his ear: "come with me. I'll lead you out, out, out to freeeeeedoommm" 

I pull my sack back onto my shoulder.  Somewhere nearby is my canteen, I should fill it from that drip lest the corridors beyond are dusty but that wind may cease any second and I need to get going.  I shuffle my feet about on the smooth rock floor until a metallic bump locates it for me. Then, licking my palm to get as good a reading as possible, I hold my hand up high, rotating it as a bat does her ear, then blind man's buff it down the gentle slope, following the wind.

The drip fades as I create a new path for myself. Tips of fingers brushing the undulations of walls unseen, I enter into what I take to be a gorge as the walls narrow around me and the wind blows harder for a while. My toes entering water as the descent continues, making my own plish plash now, I detest having wet feet. I remember back to a time when life was free and easy and I wasn't a captive beneath the crags, a trio of beautiful girls had chased me into the river when I was home on leave.  Laughing they watched as I reached the further shore, peeling off my sopping things down to nothing and laid the items in the sun on branches and a farmer's fence. I refused to budge till my boots were dry and the three pursued me valiantly, though the flood there was up to their necks. They stripped off too and we lay about on the sand, laughing and telling stories and buzzing with energies that were both sexual and of friendship, these being the days of war when a day of not seeing someone might stretch into an eternity with no warning at all.

I close my eyes, little difference it  makes in here, and grit my teeth against the iced intrusion as it soaks my socks and curls around the between toes with a malice that is borne of non-feeling.  It will warm soon, this much I know. And so I plough on into the unknown, wondering how high this tide will reach before I am obliged to swim in the oily black unknown, hoping for an exit from this misery.

Yet, salvation!  My palm fits unexpectedly into a piece of wood that turns out to be the curved top of a newel post, afixing a guiding rail up, yes - there it is! - steps. A staircase to freedom. A wonderful climb to the outside once more where new memories may be formed and living has a reason.  I climb. Dear Lord I climb. My grandfather's stairs were not so sweet as I clambered loftwards to sleep in those days on the farm when sun was shining and work was good. The hill to chapel in the Mendips, up Butts Batch on a Sunday to feel my family's faith, was ne'er so needed as this. 

I climb this stair, slimy at first from the hollow's pool, then dry as up and up they rise, raising me with them as they lift my heart and my spirits towards hope and destiny and meaning.  Collins has the definition of elucidation, and clarity is what I crave. I climb and the cave is lost to me for now. I am reborn.