The winter front brought sky of low ceiling, a slow moving gray with mournings of rain between arid eyes of melancholy, a light wind on the air that left the sense of dampness even when rains withheld and stayed in somber sky.
Under its cast, Ryan and Emma walked the streets of the old town, red and brown brick structures tucked within winter wooded wall of Appalachian valley, river running beside, swollen with rains already fallen in the high western hills.
The sky was gray, wooded valley shadow, but in shared company, they wandered in mirth; pausing beneath awnings along old city streets when rains fell in short durations; entering and pausing indoors at coffee, antique, artifact, and small local bookstores when the rains held longer.
When storm settled in, the gray of asphalt street darkening into black and the hush of rain and sweeping wind holding over world outside, they shared hours in a vintage bookstore of histories and collections of locally deceased.
It was strange how such books circulated, like spirits returned to a Greater—held for a lifetime then freed and left to wait for another’s seeking soul: to be found, restored, and resurrected in the spirit of a living, dreaming mind.
Emma spotted a three-book set arranged prominently and apart upon a shelf. They had leather spines with gold lettered print and covers of marbled pattern, back cover blank, and front bearing only print of title once again. Attracted to its aesthetic, she drew the middle volume from it place in waiting rest. “The Divine Comedy: Purgatory.”
Inside, she viewed a printed map of a mountain, seven storeys, and after, she began to read, turning pages, drawn into its verse.
As she read, Ryan wrote, capturing an idea as it presented, writing and recording pieces that, though incomplete in moment, he might make into something meaningful when given time to read and return to thought again.
Emma rested in a large, comfortable chair, mind half in the story and half in her own thoughts. She wondered what Ryan wrote, what it would tell, what it would say, what it would leave as ending and keeping thought. Would it be for her?
If he believed it worthy of her mind and eyes, she knew that he would share.
Until then, she read with mind suspended in attention somewhere between book and focused self.
She drank from her coffee, it warming and heightening her restful attention; and when he returned, Ryan found her still with book—adrift in her own thoughts and musings.
He studied her in repose, the draw of her mind—wherever she let go–reading title to book in her hand, and he smiled.
“Isn’t it fun to imagine yourself in a story?” he asked.
She looked at the book in her hands, wondering if she meant it, only having read a few cantos in, and those only with half-attention.
“To see yourself through different lens, a way you don’t consider or, everyday, see; to wonder why, sometimes, it seems the story speaks for and only to you. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t—is nothing more than chance and an effect of good art—but it doesn’t change the suspicion and secret conviction there is more to the story; and that more is what you feel within.”
She listened, contemplating his words and the way he shared.
“Maybe it’s all imagined; or maybe there really is more; a reason why the story speaks; a reason to where and how we place ourselves within its picture; the lessons it gives, feelings and effects, affinity to ideals, and belief for possibility in a dream.”
He paused in words; and she smiled, moved by his own enjoyment and expressed openness of thought.
“I imagined you in that one…” he spoke in ending.
She looked down to the marbled fabric cover, the age of its page and bindings, a century plus, but the story far older.
“This?” she asked, incredulous; having only half-read and departed from its pages into private musings. “Where?”
“On mountaintop…”
She turned again to beginning map, peak of the seventh storey, wondering what mystery held in its meaning.
Discerning, he added further layer to her wonders.
“…and beyond,” he told, “where logic and reason cannot follow,” he answered. His eyes and face were changed, shining with glow she’d never seen in him or any other, as he gazed mirthfully on her at rest, and something too within his mind.
Outside, the gray and front still held, soft rains and wisps of wind that skated patterns over street; but inside—in mind, place, and near to him, her heart and spirit warmed.