The Summit

Wraiths of mist clinged onto its jagged edges like the pale garment of a bride, as an ice bound coat of snow hung onto its limping back, hooded over its blunt head. A vermillion halo showered onto its summit, rimming its dark silhouette with a shimmer of neon light. Darkness took shelter in the over head emerald conifers, weaving in and out of its periphery like a needle and a thread, stitching up its vulnerabilities as a warning, forbidding any daring soul from entering its humble abode. Enigma chained across its aloof presence, the unknown strapped around its legs. Life had been snatched from it, it had thrown the iron grip of nature upon it to be futile in its barren land stripped of any sign of the living. Arms slumping against either side they sunk into the deep earth its skin flaking of in unison with each rock that shatters at the scree lunging into the overgrown ivy that treaded its foreign soil. A pathway encrusted across its chest snaking, coiling around till its neck. 

Crevices snuck into the tipping boulders as crevasses hid within the melting ice fleeing from the radiating heat. An avalanche on the verge of tilting towards grave danger stretching towards an unreachable equilibrium with tranquility and peace. It endlessly rolled slipping the vice like grasp of friction that encased the mountain’ surface. A breeze hummed in the air, mountain goats bleated, alpines danced with the flow of the wind as rocks smashed against its creased, bumpy skin. The sun glued onto the centre of the sky had opened the silent land with sounds, resembling life that developed and adapted in the mountain’s harsh environment. A flicker of hope triggered a protest against the frigid air shunned into the thinning sky. A chill rolled over the mountains ground, engulfing it whole, bitter it stinged its liking ripping the warmth that clamped the rocks like a tearing wall paper. 

Dipping into the horizon the golden ball drowned in the distant fading glow as shadows thrummed with energy repeating its abysmal cycle.