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In response to a prompt from A Writer’s Path.

Include all of these elements into a scene: a wine glass, a translation book, awe, and a puzzle piece.

*****

Travel Carter Caves

She sat on a blanket on the hard, uneven ground of the Cave of Souls. The tarnished brass oil lamp sitting on the over-turned crate drenched the space around her with soft yellow light. Taking a bubble-wrapped bundle from her backpack, she unwrapped the pink wine glass. It was special to her. The only one left from her wedding set. It was fitting, she thought, that she use it on this special occasion. Filling it with St. Chapelle Special Harvest Riesling 20-yesterday, she set it beside the lamp on the crate.

Shivering in the slight breeze that always filled the cave with fresh air, she pulled her sweater closer about her, tugging long, red hair from beneath the collar. The evening was late, the cave dark. The circle of light was small and intimate not reaching into the far corners of the grotto. But she wasn’t afraid. She’d been here many, many times in the past six months. In truth, it felt like home to her now. She could hear the crickets playing their nightly symphony, and somewhere in the distance a drip, plop, drip, plop of water into the fresh spring she’d been drinking from all these months. A spring that had revived her soul.

Settling cross-legged on the blanket, she pulled the Book of Translation from her pack. Lovingly she ran her hand over the cover reading the words for the hundredth time, Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self. Reverently she opened it to the very last essay in the book. This was it. The last piece of the puzzle of her life, of who she’d been in the far past. Not a literal piece of puzzle, of course, but a puzzle that was her, nonetheless.

Retrieving her glass she sipped the dry wine as she began to read the final entry in the Book of Translation.

“Something More is self-knowledge. The knowledge that your passion is holy and that the only way you’ll be able to live authentically is to be true to your passions. But the only way you or I can be true to our passions is to swear never, ever to betray ourselves again.”*

The lamp flickered beside her as her mind wondered off now and then taking stock yet again of what she’d learned from the book. The crickets cricked, the pool plopped, the bottle emptied, and finally she was at the end.

“For the sake of all that is holy, believe that you deserve nothing less than Something More.”*

Setting the empty glass aside, she closed the book and hugged it to her chest feeling the wonder and awe of all she’d learned about herself these many months. The final piece of the puzzle was in place, the picture of who she was firmly fixed in her memory and mind. One last question haunted her, though. It was one thing to know who you’d been in the past, but did she have the courage to continue her journey to who she would become in the future?

Standing, she began packing up her bag. She looked around. I’m going to miss coming here, she thought. And though it might have been the breeze that wended its way through the cave, she could have sworn she heard someone say, This Sanctuary is always here for you. It’s yours, after all.

~Calen

 

* quotes from Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self