Chapter XVIIII - On recurrent themes

Once again I find myself having spend a night not quite awake yet not at all sleeping. This inbetween restlessness is tiring in so many ways.
Yes there are some kind of dreams but they are even more elusive than the regular kind, though I shouldn't really be able to say for sure any more. And there are lights, seemingly distant lights and shadows yet they somehow seem to hover just beyond my reach.
I have to find some way to shield myself from these aethers that affect my senses so strongly, otherwise I will soon not be able to navigate safely anymore
.

Chapter XVIII - Apricot hills

So odd the taste of apricots again after all this time. And afterwards I swear everything was tinged with their essence. The hills not just burnt but soft and apricotty! Really it was very similar to being drunk or in love or maybe just very very sad.
Wandering in this stupor I almost didn't notice a slight change in the flows. A shifting in the aethers as if something in the sky above me became aware of my presence. Very faint yet distinctly there and quite focused somehow.
Anyway that's what it felt like for just a second or two when I finally departed from my odd and rather fruity imaginings. I say a second but maybe it was actually even less. As soon as it(?) registered my attention it disappeared, vanished, evaporated.
Who knows, maybe it's just an affliction that ails all lonely wanderers in these forsaken lands ?

Chapter XVII - On foreign shores

Going around the car I tried the frontdoor and after a pull a push and a kick it did allow itself to be opened.
The seats were quite dry if a bit hard, another sign of this particular cars old age. But there is something about just sitting quietly in a car. It is as if you get to experience the eccoes of its many short trips mixed up with a few longer journeys.
In the glove compartment I found some stale apricot shortbread and an old travel brochure with flamboyant pictures of sunsets on foreign shores. Quite romantic and very much an illusion to which no one will fall prey, at least not unknowingly. Well maybe that too worked better years ago when the car was still new.

Chapter XVI - Memories of travels past

Time is such an elusive creature. You never quite get to know her, only the secret signs she leaves on your face and hands.
Going out the same way I entered it seemed to me as if I hadn't really seen the tower in its entirety before. Hence deciding to explore a bit more before going on I walked around the base to the back, and found an old rusty car gently and slowly passing away with dreams of travels past. Such a peacefull setting in these strange lands.

Chapter XV - Weawers spells and other tricks

Entering the tower the first thing to catch my eye was an extraordinary gobelin. Of old age for sure but well kept. The design however quite foreign and asymmetrical. I did not remember ever having seen anything quite like it.

Chapter XIV - Silence of a beckoning

Waking up suddenly as if sensing someone next to me, I turned my head and saw the door previously barred from within now slightly ajar, as if beckoning me to enter. After so much time spend in the shadow of the tower it would really seem an awful waste not to accept such an opportunity for enlightenment. Thus it passed that I found myself getting up, though I must say the exercise was quite painful and in that way a testimony to time lost.

Chapter XIII - Lost time at the tower

For so long I just sat there. And what to make of it. No hunger no thirst just time lost to the tower. Strange, I can see that now. I did wonder what the next day would bring, if it ever came around. Thinking that maybe I was just sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, perchance dreaming it all.

Chapter XII - To the tower

Walking in the direction of the sound of the train I hoped to follow the tracks and thereby sooner or later to be able to forage in one of the many abandoned stations that haunt this part of the country. However the first building of any kind I came across was an odd sort of tower seemingly disconnected with any obvious purpose. Trying the door I found that it was locked and bared from within. I sat down to rest a bit and ponder the wise in forcing my entrance. Did I want to know the secret of what was hidden inside? Probably not.

Chapter XI - Remembrance and hillsides

So there I was away from the house and almost completely immersed in whistling my new little fancy traveltune. It did do the job remarkably well considering the odd silences surrounding us on all sides. Once I believe I saw the wings of an angel disappearing behind a large pine. Well that's music to you, it can summon all sorts of creatures. When the forrest suddenly ended and gave over to rustbrown rolling hills I decided that it would soon be time to start looking for you again. From the north came the calming thunder of a freighttrain on its way to the coast.

Chapter X - Through velvet silences

Well now I finally departed the house where I had stayed for awhile. How long as I've said before I can't say really. Going into the deep of the pineforrest I felt quite exalted and took it upon myself to compose a short whistletune for walking. A little joyful thing not to complicated and easy to remember.