The Orphan’s Ascent

He knew the path—how oft, in dreams, he’d traced
The serpent-road that coiled through pines and stone,
Where winter’s teeth had gnawed the earth to waste,
And every rock bore whispers not his own.
Yet still he climbed, though reason pled retreat,
For in the heights there pulsed a truth unnamed,
A secret veiled where sky and granite meet,
A voice that called through years he’d never claimed.

***

Three winters past, when first the orphan’s feet
Had faltered at the village’s frayed edge,
He’d glimpsed her face—a flame in twilight’s sheet,
A girl who spun the dusk to golden thread.
Liora, named for light that dies too soon,
Her laughter rang where icicles held speech,
A melody that thawed the harshest moon,
Yet never crossed the chasm time could breach.

They met where frost etched fables on the glass,
Beneath the alder’s skeletal embrace,
Their words half-spoken, trembling as they passed—
Two moths that circled, fearing light’s disgrace.
She spoke of stars that drowned in mountain wine,
Of springs unborn beneath the snow’s tight seal;
He told of roots that clutch at depths divine,
Of questions stones and seasons might reveal.

But oh, how cautious danced their untried hearts!
Her father’s forge, which hammered day to night,
And he, the ward of grudging kin, whose arts
Were silence, chores, and keeping out of sight—
What right had they to kindle what might burn?
The world, all ice and unrelenting creed,
Would freeze the bud before it dared to turn
Toward a sun it never meant to heed.

***

Yet in the crevices where shadows thinned,
They built a vault of moments, frail and dear:
A sparrow’s feather on the wind rescind,
A shared crust savored fast against the year.
Once, by the well where frost had choked its tongue,
She pressed a locket—cold against his palm—
A braid of chestnut hair, by noose unstrung,
And said, “Keep this, where no one sees the balm.”

He wore it hidden, warm beneath his thread,
A second pulse that hummed against his breast,
A fragile sun no blizzard’s wrath could shed,
Though storms might rend the eagle from its nest.
But came the day her cough, a rasping knell,
Bled through the cracks of doors he dared not breach.
The village healer shook her head—”Farewell,
The lung’s bright fire no poultice can impeach.”

He watched her window, dimming day by day,
A star snuffed slow behind the glacial pane,
While elders muttered, “God will have His way,”
And children traced her name in sleet’s wet stain.
The night she slipped beyond the curtain’s keep,
He stole to where the frozen river wept,
And howled a vow no mortal soul could reap—
To scale the peak where truth’s last ember slept.

***

Now here, where air grew thin as childhood’s faith,
He clawed at cliffs that mocked his tender grip,
His palms raw hymns to phantoms love bequeathed,
His heart a drum that staggered, skip by skip.
The locket swung—her hair a taunting kiss—
Each gust a reminder of her stolen breath,
While far below, the world persisted, less,
A graveyard swaddled in indifference’s wreath.

At last, the summit—cruel in its repose—
A plateau bare but for the wind’s sharp tune,
And there, half-buried in the snow’s grim throes,
A trunk of oak, time-split yet still immune.
With fingers numb as ghosts, he pried it wide—
Inside, a cache of letters, bound in twine,
Their ink a river dried to dust, yet cried
A tale of lives entwined, of blood, of sign.

He read by light the blizzard could not quell:
A father’s flight, a mother’s fevered end,
A name not his, yet ringing like a bell—
_Her_ father’s hand, the truths he’d sought to mend.
For in the veins that winter’s grip had blue’d,
There flowed a kinship neither time could smother—
Cousins bound, though law and shame eschewed,
A love condemned before it claimed a mother.

***

The truth, at last—a blade without a sheath—
Pierced deeper than the cold’s narcotic kiss.
What use this knowing, bought beneath death’s wreath?
The mountain’s answer: avalanche and abyss.
He clutched the locket, now his only proof
That hearts can beat where destinies deride,
And faced the east, where dawn’s deceitful roof
Spread falsefire gold above the void’s cold tide.

“Liora,” whispered through his chapped despair,
Her name a shard of glass within his throat,
“If souls can span the silence of the air,
Meet me where time forgets the words it wrote.”
No echo answered but the gale’s crude psalm,
No shadow stirred but his, austere and lone.
The letters swirled—ash in a world too calm—
As night descended, vast, and he, undone,

Let go. The locket, gripped through years of frost,
Fell slow, a comet’s plunge through endless white,
While he, unmoored from all his bridges crossed,
Embraced the cliff’s last sacrament of flight.
The wind, which once had borne her laughter’s peal,
Now cradled him through twilight’s final door—
A boy erased, save for the love made real
In death’s mute arms, where secrets hurt no more.

***

Below, the village slept, its chimneys crowned
With smoke that curled like questions never posed.
The mountain kept the silence it had found,
Its snowy breast where two sad stars reposed.
And somewhere, in the void between the spheres,
Where time dissolves to ash, and ash to song,
A girl with chestnut braid still smiles, and hears
A voice she loved, though right and truth were wrong.

The dawn, indifferent, gilded peak and plain,
Revealing naught but snow’s unblinking face.
No trace remained of anguish, oath, or pain—
Just wind, which mourns all things it can’t replace.