Overgrown Tower

As you leave behind rock and rubble fields, they give way to root systems that seem to mingle and connect in tangles at the base of trees you cannot see the tops of. Every so often, stained green stillness slants through the path ahead, deep gold light from the sun bending and breaking between branches. The twisting maze of lantern-lit pathways lead to small, almost subterranean alcoves, their cobblestone floors often filled with shallow pools of water. Beds of moss, sponge-soft and inviting seem to beckon you forth, luring you deeper and deeper into this hidden place, until one begins to hear the immense beckoning, as if from a far off sound of music, some voice humming a lullaby in the distant wood. Your limbs feel weighty, loose and heavy all at once as this place’s secret blooms within you: that it is a garden, standing at the base of a mighty tower, left to grow over itself, to be lush and wild once more, to feed roots of its own. Those who dare pursue that sorcerous song wind up in the center of this overgrown place, the nearest window a hundred feet up the vine-covered face of it, just beneath the steeple. You feel something heavy take root in your chest standing there, and when you turn, you realize the entrance too has grown over, and you don’t know the way out.