outside / inside : the mountain

Where I come from, the mountains, there was a story we used to tell each other. Nobody knew how true the story actually was, but it had become as much a part of us as the mountain was. The story was about a man. A man who had lived on the mountain thousands of years ago. It was about this man who had wanted to escape from weather. The man had noticed that outside, on the mountain, the weather was always changing. There it changes so fast, before the rain has time to hit the ground. One evening, on the mountain, when the man was busy sharpening his tools, he cut himself on the flint. Never having seen it before, the man touched his blood. He felt it was warm. Even though he himself felt cold, he felt his blood was warm.

This led the man to dedicate himself to escaping from the weather. He dedicated himself to finding a warmth, blood-like, which never went cold. The man eventually decided to dig, down, deep, into the mountain. For twenty years he tunnelled, with stone tools, and, after they became blunted and worn, with his fingers, bleeding from the rock. Deep into the heart of the mountain he dug with bleeding fingers. At long last, he found himself at the core, at the very centre, of the mountain. Expecting to feel blood all around him, enveloping him, he was surprised. At the heart of the mountain there was nothing but one rain cloud, hovering in front of him. The man stood, staring at it, for what felt like hours. After a while, the man decided to step into the rain cloud. The man huddled up there, around his warm blood, and slept. The man slept there, and never emerged.

TOMAS WEBER