Spiraling mindsets,
Shattered perceptions,
Twisted and mangled plans for the future lie all around.

Dying dreams scattered in the churned-up mud,
As a light but steady rainfall of dread cascades upon the carnage.

The accusations are steaming from where the rain hits it,
Both sides fired shots at each other so rapidly the barrels warped beyond recognition.

Rusted fields of barbed comments lie between,
Where even a knick could spell infection and disaster.

New dreams arrive to replace the old,
But are torn asunder just as quickly,
Hard truths rake their lines as they cross,
Torn asunder by those terrible things.

This place was once nice,
Full of hope,
A place of peace and happiness,
But now is lost,
To fire and steel,
As the guns finally fall silent.

Alone a tired man writes,
The scratches of pencil on paper his only companion in the room,
Writing down his experiences,
Hoping someone will read them one day.

His shoulders are slightly slumped,
As if weighted down by all he has seen and done,
A physical presence that never leaves him,
A great yet terrible burden he bared.

His once -sharp eyes are slightly dulled,
As if to filter the things he now sees,
Through the tint that is the past.

His hair is grey,
The dark hair he once had long since changed,
A new grey hair with every lesson learned,
Lessons he writes down.

Scars can be easily seen on his tan skin,
Traversing from his gnarled fingers,
Up across the backs of his hands and disappearing up past his elbows,
Hidden by his rolled up sleeves,
A roadmap of past knicks, cuts, and mistakes.

The scratching continues in the room,
With pauses only for him to put a filled piece of paper into the growing stack,
Drawing a blank one and continue writing once again.

How much of a difference,
Does a few hours make?

In the grand scheme that is time,
A few hours can be both nothing and everything,
Windows of opportunity,
Constantly opining and closing,
With just a few ticks of the clock,
Some never to return.

When our lives are a summation of these things,
They seem to take on a new importance, no?

One door closes,
Another opens,
A labyrinth of opportunities and pitfalls,
With no guide to possibly be found.

So take a moment,
Collect yourselves,
There are a million opportunities more,
And fear not the unknown,
My friend,
It is the recognizable that should be feared.

Cresting the peak of the mountain,
The Wanderers stopped their wagon for a moment,
To take in the glory before their eyes,
Great mountains all around,
The bases of these monoliths of time shrouded by clouds and mist,
Hiding their true size,
When the clouds were shot through by the wind,
It completed their effect,
It was as if the mountain peaks were islands,
Protrutions from an ocean of soft white.

They had traveled for days,
Their horses sore,
Treacherous was their way,
But the reward could not be ignored,
A prize of knowledge and lore,
Pieces of puzzles that they needed,
For solving it had evaded both of them for so long.

Their reasons for answers were different,
Brought together by chance,
But it was as if their fates intertwined,
Curling around one another like creeping vines until they would not, could not be separated.

One was an individual formed from facts and an urge to adventure,
Away from family for the first real time,
She was the summation of the terrerial,
Things as solid as the wooden boards beneath her feet,
The other was formed by instinct and an urge for purpose,
Experienced in the world and it showed,
He was the summation of the ethereal,
The abstract, like the legends and folk tales of old.

The fought for different reasons, yet the end goals were the same,
Two individuals bound down a path of hardships and toil,
Trials and tribulations that neither could imagine was in store.

But it was something both knew could be conquered,
For touched by fate were they,
As they got their horses going again,
They descended down the path,
Into the mists,
Into the horror and unknown.

A singular spark
Igniting a small amount of kindling,
From there it feeds,
The worst and most terrible flames can be caused by the smallest of embers.

It hits you like a semitruck,
One that is loaded with lead weights and ******* bees,
It's like a switched is flipped and your mind is transported to an earlier time,
To when you were younger and more brash,
When the calm flame that resides within you rages into a towering inferno that threatens to burn anything that stands in its way.

Past goals that you once thought impossible to reach now seem trivial,
And that you can now blow through them like their made of wet tissue paper.

Your hands start to shake like nothing else,
Not from fear,
But excitement,
It's like all your senses crank up to 11 and beyond,
Everything is crisp and vivid.

You're ******,
Your not sure at what,
But you know you're ******,
And it's not a spatula anger,
It's the kind of rage that people are wary of,
For it's one that is tempered by calculated thoughts and an even rationale.

The real dangerous kind.

You need to get up,
To do something,
Anything.

But sometimes the inferno will burn everything up,
Leaving only smoldering ruins and devestation.