The Epilogue : Part I
She cried for all she could. Her fingertips which were still glued to the Archway went pale as life and warmth were pressed out of them.
All of a sudden her heart felt too heavy for her chest to bear. The words tried and failed, all the way to understand the anguish that shattered her soul like a sword plunged deep to the very core.
And it was a wonder she was still standing.
The Elephants, the Gentle Giants.
And sane too, are known also for their soul-deep relationships. At losing a loved one, they can delve in grief so deep, they starve themselves to death.
And she was breathing. Her calves fought a ceaseless battle to carry her weight. But she was still alive.
The woman who escaped from a mafia breach. The woman who lost her husband and brothers. The woman who fell from a dune. The woman who walked through the desert...
That woman was still alive to stand by the Archway and admire this 'New Creation'.
Her bones froze to the marrow and her flesh went numb when the sun was well over the horizon... Perhaps, even shameless.
Shameless, even the waters of the sea, filling the gap between the ripped coast.
Why had not the sun forgotten to rise today? As if the earth had not been splintered? Like a home had not been destroyed? Like lives had not been taken and misery augmented?
How Shamel...
(Nature always keeps the balance!)
Came a whisper from deep in her heart, old and familiar, almost forgotten but alive.
Sooner or later, it always does.
The guilt surged over her heart, seeping through every fracture in it and they seethed! And she cringed inwards, mortified.
Such a great weight of guilt, she had not known of being a sinner.
How had she dared question Nature, and by it, its Creator?
How had she questioned God?! Her Maker!
Shame overran her. Overran her knowledge and her wisdom and her conscience.
Had she not just taken a vow to be patient? And how quickly did she break it! What more shameful than this?
What was her misery to the trial of Job?
All that he possessed was destroyed, his children were killed, his body put in torturous agony and even his wife rebuked him to curse God.
But he still held fast to that faith for which he was tested. So faithful that even God acknowledged, there is none as righteous as He.
" God gives, and He has taken away," Job said, "When God sends us something good, we welcome it. How can we complain when he sends us trouble?" Job had reasoned to his wife.
Yes, she had lost her husband and brothers and much more but she was favored enough to have walked the desert and could still stand alive.
Anna bit her bottom lip raw and dry. And the wailings of her sorrow and shame ripped out from her throat at last. Such agony laced in it, the living hearts trembled.
She wanted to repent, to beg for it but even words betrayed her. Her head hung from her shoulders and her hair curtained her face.
The darkness of shame and grief more consuming than the waking light around her.
But she made no effort to reign her keening, for even Job had mourned. The Righteous Man tore his clothes and grieved at his children's demise.
It is indeed a Gift of the Heart, to feel, and empathize. And it is no crime to weep nor is it frailty.
Sir J. R. R. Tolkien had quoted,
" I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."
What joy had been in the heart of God, knitting our sorrows?
What light is there in the author's soul, penning the torments for their beloved creations?
But we have the Gift... and the Right to weep.
And Anna's tears legitimized the sharp-stinging fact: great was not the precipice, not more than the rift in her heart.
She begged till her voice tore off to a miserable tone; begged for God to heal that rift. Heal it for she, a pitiable human, could only stitch it with the painful threads raking the wounds evermore.
Only that Sovereign God could renew her too-broken heart and she knew it.
Slow but sure as the rising sun, her eyelids rose, swollen with tauten veins, asking through a veil of tears, for God to take her to the other side, to let her live through this battle and she would Adorn the Scars.
And as if the tears had been healing waters, they washed her eyes and the sun bestowed them a new light to see from, for what she saw, was the Answer to her Prayers.
Hope is often found in the unlikely of places. And for Anna, it was just as unlikely as laboring to unlock the door and the key is hanging silently beside it.
The same hand found the surface of the Archway again, this time to haul her up back on those numb feet. Her knees were still sore with jarring pain but they fought it better now.
How do you shoot better in archery?
The bow and arrow remain the same, it is the strength and might of the arms behind that changes.
The offspring of calamity that was the cliffs still stood unfazed there, it was Anna who needed to change how she sees them.
She did not forget her lesson on patience this time. Weary but firm steps led her to the lip of the cliff which held no promise of her escape, but at least, it showed her the way.
To the right, a rough, almost invisible, but gradual slope descended down toward where the roots of the ridges were being gnawed by the Gap. Another stony staircase mirrored from the other side and where they met at last, down below; Anna's eyes shone from gray to silver; the rubble of stones proposed to her a bridge in disguise. The way across.
She made her feet edge towards the first descent, cautiously but altogether hopefully.
The first step and her boot slipped, though so slightly but the stones seemed not to get along well with the soles of her boots. It needed something to cling to it better, something alive like the skin of her bare feet.
It jerked her to a stop, one hand bracing her bump and the other rushing to boulder for support.
Pressing herself to the earth, she discarded her boots and on she went again. Lying low and sticking to the dear stones, marking their old untouched surfaces with the warmth of her feet.
Many a time did she swoon at the drooping height and trembled, though she tried not to, lest she fell; not from a dune this time but ancient unforgiving stones and be splattered to her demise, and Hers too.
She gasped untimely with her thundering heartbeats while she scaled that dreary wall until that narrow aisle lay waiting before her, though she feared what it waited for.
The waves lashed viciously and greedily onto the stones and Anna shuddered at their activities, never so afraid of them before.
It looked like a race, to be honest. Anna pushing on and off of the slippery stones and the waves crawling with its shifting maws open at her.
The winds gyrated in a fearful and violent dance and in its wage, deranged Anna's hair and dress, adding to her struggle, sending her feet landing here and there.
But she fought her best.
The waters and the wind made the dread of death spider-walk her spine and she almost cried when a sinister wave kissed her soiled feet and she flinched, stepping on a jagged stone.
She gripped her knee, biting back her yelp as fresh pain sprang into her flesh, roaring reverberations into her bones. No doubt, she had stained that old ancient stone scarlet with her blood.
Limping and aching, she continued with each wave reaching for her, of the sea and of pain. And of fear deeper than oceans, of yet not being on the safe side and of the water that sucked at her toes.
With all and everything happening around her, she could not discern if any change awakened within her. Though it made no difference other than hastening her pace.
Wetness, she felt snaking her inner thighs but it was not the water of the sea, for it was not cold.
Her water broke!
She might have paused had it not been the monster that was the sea, laying seafoam at her calves. So much that she could no longer see the stones beneath her and every now and then she winced as the wound hit another edgy stone.
Her throat went parched again, her head swooned again as she neared the wall. The waters pushed and pulled at her legs again and again, and at no success, kept engulfing the aisle behind her.
Her eyes were wide at the might of God, how He unleashed the brute force of life upon her. But she is His Warrior. And He gives the toughest battles to his best soldiers.
Just a little more and she would be climbing up to her Elysium, she told herself. A monstrous wave lunged right behind her and stones quaked.
The path of stones disheveled and she just made it in time, with fear no less.
She wasted no time in composing herself, not for a single thought before clambering up again. The wound was raw but her toes cold and numb, altogether miserable. But she kept moving, even on all four if required.
And she obeyed however the situations bent her, ceasing not for a single breath. Until her consciousness gave away its hold on her.
But not before her eyes were graced by, after so long, the sight of another human.
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