It is getting dark. They still have some walking to do, apparently more than they thought. They say that they cannot afford to give up now, not after they have gone this far. It starts to rain. It is quite heavy. Thunder claps defiantly. They pray the lightening stops. The fear on their faces tells it all. They move on regardless. With no shelter in sight, the few miles they say remain must seem like forever.
It has been ten years now. He still remembers though the day it all started, when he made the pledge to take her where no one has ever been. She seemed to like the idea then, given her enthusiastic acceptance of the challenge, as she put it. She still admits though that she should have reconsidered the pledge. She says she wanted to be strong for him, as she knew how vulnerable he was at the time, despite that she got hurt.
Nothing has changed, he insists, as they wade through poodles of salt as she calls them that shine in a golden haze as intense rays intermittently filter through sullen skies over the hills on a mid-summer afternoon that seems going to last forever. He says the shadow of the hills they head fortifies him, to rededicate his pledge to her to experience what he says is the edge of infinity, the cradle of the next life, the solution to the angst of all that defines the shapes into which it morphs from whence they left.
She says she cannot wait, even as she admits to rumbles within her crying for her to return home. He says home is where they head, that she is almost there, as much as he is farther away from her. Her sideways glance barely missed his waiting eyes. He turns away as if in remorse, but it seems too late, as she says nothing of his imprudence, its guise notwithstanding, which probably he knows must hurt.
Pausing a while, that he embarks on such a voyage she says stupefies. An ideal he laments as vain, but which he nonetheless seems to manipulate for succor in a virile contrition characterized by inordinate bravado. He must really want to convince her about his penance, she mutters. Yet, she says he fails, that she craves nothing from him to cringe about, and that he does not need her to fill his hubristic gaol.
He denies being ensconced. He says all he does is plain is why he accepts blame for his transgressions, ever ready for penance, even to admit he is still culpable just for her. It does not seem to help, and may have made matters worse for him, as she simply keeps going, apparently determined to see the place he says signifies immanence, where he says both will emerge into unblemished newness, for what may be even more mysterious reasons she seems to prefer to keep private.
Not that he does not ask what the reasons are, but she responds with a chronicle, many of which he acknowledges surprise him. She says they underline that he assumes her grace is boundless. He admits, but says it ought to be that way, being the subject he says it seems. She says she is in fact the subject, given his chronic penchant for sudden alien abduction. He mumbles inaudibly. She presses on regardless it appears, to seize a rare prospect with someone more prone to peppered emotional fits than he is wont to admit explains suspect instant profundity that she typically ignores.
She admits that she is embracing it now, regardless of what her guts says, that the salt now has a different mien, one of imminent sublimity. He asks why she calls rain the salt, perhaps feigning ignorance. She says, it tastes like salt, that the crystals seem buried in the shimmer once lit, the mirage an enigmatic potion that draws her soul in the direction of the hills, of epiphany.
She denies that she needs redemption, but admits to atavistic urges for resolution of apparently static narratives. He says they serve a purpose, she cares less she counters who the object is she argues tells what the subject is. He says she is right but insists he plays his role well, to wallow in shame as reason to frolic in fickle frenzy laden with ennui. She abhors an apology for that she says stressing the subject persists to glow.
They agree not to argue anymore about the issue, but to focus on the trip to the supposed cradle, where he says resolution awaits. It drizzles every now and then, the salt she says surprisingly less intense, the track still paved with precious poodles, he says he does not see. They seem to dry up in the fullness of light into which they steadily emerge, to which she replies, to roaming eyes.
He laments his fate, she, the endless kafuckle over nothingness he craves. She says the case is clear, that the hills reveal all, that the light shines over them, to bathe our tired souls in eternal warmth that yet eludes us, so we seek beyond the crucible, a cradle, in perpetual defiance of the common will manifest on the hills.
He agrees that this perhaps explains why he does not see the gold-trim salt pits beckoning in mirages along the way that the light even as it pours, periodically, which she says should remind us of the will, not of subject or object, relics of yore, erased memories in a mien of salt that stays the same even in morphed monotony. They are now at the foot of the hills. They stop and look up to the skies. Then they turn back not saying a thing.
He turns round and round seemingly about to wake up. Then he lapsed back into slumber but not for long. The pillow is now on his face, perhaps to protect his eyes from the rays that still seem to shine from above, to reveal the grace beside him he says he wants to show so much he pleads for penance, for love lost to hidden narratives he craves to change. He turns again, and wakes her up at last, presumably to say sorry at which she is patently aghast.
