The First Lesson

After the Shadowed Valley, at the foothills of Mount Piru, I first saw the Ten Thousand Stares.

That is the literal translation. It is in fact a staircase, older than memory. Starkly simple yet curiously elegant grey slabs of stone, with matching banisters on either side every hundred ascending paces, led a wandering path up the mountain. Upon the center of every stair rose two dark gleaming orbs, lodged halfway into the stone.

Only after several hundred steps did I realize they were eyes.

Not real eyes, but decoratively equivalent. It felt wrong to tread on them, so I kept to the left, and my weary progress weighed more heavily with the sense that I was being observed.

Night fell. I chose a spot and tried to sleep. Morning rose. I stretched my aching body and pressed on, upward into a thick fog that veiled the slopes and obscured my view of the land below. The air was cool and thick in my lungs.

I lost count of the steps. Then I lost count of the periodic banisters.

Then I lost count of time.