'DAVID"

Painting- Caspar David Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog"

The dust finally began to settle underneath his feet, and with it his pulse, which up until that very moment had beat beneath his skin in steady powerful, sure rushes like dragon wings. The storm too had settled, and the clouds broke backwards to their assigned seating in the sky. He had a moment to gather himself, to convince himself of his own bravery, and exceptional courage. But… after only a few beats the ground took up its former procession across the soles of his feet. Inspired by some strange new catalyst to take leave of its previous inertia, he felt his heart begin to despair, as clouds began to rush along the earth bringing with them the uncertainty of its host. He could hear the drums in the distance, just over the sound of his own anxiety scratching against the walls of his imagination. The peace which seemed but only a flicker of a candle in his mind, lost its footing along the edges of his nerve, and shattered in pieces strewn along his various extremities, which exhibited itself as a shudder. The small crowd of distant onlookers, close friends and family whose thoughts, encouragement, and prayers, he could no longer seem to remember, began to fade into deeper recesses of shadows. The air stiff and arid, slid down his lungs and took up a vice grip in his stomach. The dust now rose in a violent dance around his feet and on his side and to his front, and the silhouette of the doubt he thought he had long since slayed took form as his better across the field and over the mount of his internal strife. As he began to feel the negligible tremble that had taken residence in his hands, he clinched them into fist, beat once upon his chest to release the air trapped in his gut, looked forward, chin up, hands sure...facing the direction of his old adversary, and trembled for what he hoped would be one last time.