The wizard’s tower

Daniel Wicher

by Daniel Wicher

Story

Betwixt a flash of trinkets and baubles, a workshop for taming unearthly power, there lay a library worth of dusty tomes, ancient wisdom waiting to be devoured, by a young man with hair black as coal, bags under his eyes, relentless curiosity taking its toll, as nights spent sleeplessly left him famished of rest, desperate for answers he pressed on and on to illuminate even the darkest of in-between mind and matter, not to be seen by uninitiated eye. A sigh escaping his lips as his blurry gaze swayed through piles of arcane paraphernalia, grasping his hair violently he steamed “Failure… failure… failure…… No matter how much I study and research, my heart still thirsts is perched atop crossroads of meanings that whenever I try to unravel this net, the thread I follow falls apart and disperses. Cursed it seems, like I’m at the mercy of higher power’s whimsy, and flimsy at best are the answers that fate has offered. Only ever half awake, never past this longing ache of souls searching to belong. Perhaps there’s nothing out there? Cosmos without Kismet, only chaos and a frigid cold that entropy will settle… No… that must be wrong… for we are born of stars, and if a mind made of stars might be so bold to assume meaning does it not follow, that it exists if only in my head, yet thought alone some would consider to be hollow, a facade behind which we, presumptuous and callow, think that there is more. Though an illusion, perceptible but not what it seems, like a clear watered pond that really just is sunlight beams, their gleam reflected upon the scorched earth, the picture falls apart at its seams as soon as one approaches… and our thirst still lingers, encroaches upon what hallowed sense of truth we are given at birth. Shallow now feels such unbridled childlike mirth when one stops and ponders that the greatest wonders of this earth are only ever surface deep. Once the veil however is taken away, sways of gaiety not as easily can take hold of us, and we stay anchored, rather marooned after the tides have dried and evaporated risen beyond our reach as cumuli. So if all this talk of purpose is nothing but capricious conjecture then why… Why do I feel this calling to soar with the winds above and search through clouds, it seems pointless spoken aloud yet within me a spark of hope is ignited, it yearns to burn brightly fuelled by my undivided attention to this sisyphean task. Only reluctantly dare I ask if all the striving is a plot of my conniving mind to drive me mad.” A moment of silence consumed the room broken only by the ticking of a grandfathers clock, counting a couple dozen seconds… “Tick, tock, tick, tock.” before he finally resumed “Perhaps my queries were meant to be asked not answered, no quest for truth or objectivity, rather, and I add quite wearily, the point was always just to humour me. To keep me occupied and thinking until the twinkle in my eye has fizzled out and left me old and grey. Means not for an end but to pave a way upon which I thread. No worth lies in content, only in following through. An idea of which I am unsure if daunting and damning or comforting if true. And how would I know… all that’s left is to keep on learning… for what else am I to do?”


© Daniel Wicher 2023-09-01

Genres
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Moods
Reflektierend, Challenging
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