light, found {part two of sort-of-a-story}

The city woman found herself wondering and wandering as she had when she was young. Though this time there were no bustling boulevards to navigate. She was alone in a vast valley surrounded by jagged mountain peaks. With one lost pearl nestled within her clenched fist the woman took one step forward and then another. To the mountains she would go, unsure of the journey ahead as the city lights behind her grew dim.



She held no sense of direction. She traveled, as it were, by intuition and chance. There was no path grooved into the earth. She felt as if hers were the first feet to tread upon this way, a pioneer into a strange country of unknown danger. It would be many miles before the woman's dread of letting go of her past would become transformed into a quest for what lied ahead.

After many days and nights of walking towards the highest mountain peak it seemed to her that the sun was shining less. Daylight became scarcer when she reached the foothills of the great mountain. "Have I made a mistake going this way?"

Faced with the uncertainty of the sojourn ahead yet knowing it was too late to turn around and return to the city where her broken pearls laid, the woman simple stopped. Paralyzed by ambiguity of where her life was meant to traverse, she simply sat down within a small field of rocks and boulders and hunched over to cry. Tears found their way down upon her leathered face, cascading down upon her drawn up arms until at least one tear found it's way to the pearl still nestled within her clenched-up fist. The single tear disappeared into the crevices of her drawn up hand. The pearl, forgotten and hidden within the woman's fear, became baptized by her sorrow.

Light began to shine from her closed-up hand. The woman lifted up her head in wonder as beams illuminated the shadows around her. She held out her arm and slowly opened the fist that held the pearl. A sunrise floated from her fingers.

The pearl's great light showered the landscape. What the woman could not see before now became showcased by it's spotlight. She was not stranded in a bleak rock field of barrenness. No. The pearl's light brought to her vision a kaleidoscope of beauty and life.

With renewed hope, the woman rose up and with the pearl's light in hand, commenced once again on her unknown journey. Light, that she did not know she possessed, became her lamp upon the path her feet found.

to be continued...

**artpiece by cliodhna