Peacock

The Pilgrim stood outside the gate and stared in amazement at its ornate splendor.  Made of dark wood, it rose high into the sky, with red sandstone walls stretching on either side, hugging the citadel that sat in the middle of immense fields of giant rippling stalks that waved languorously under the playful springtime breeze. In the distance,  the smoky blue mountains stood watchful, silent,  like formidable guardians. 

The Pilgrim touched the surface of the giant doors – it was unlike any wood she had ever seen or felt before.  Carved with intricate designs molded with filaments of gold, bronze and copper,  it was inlaid with polished precious stones.  The pilgrim reached out to caress a turquoise that glittered an emerald hue.  The woodwork was so seamless, that when closed, the gates did not appear to be made of two immense doors but rather, the radiant fantail of a peacock.

How beautiful, she thought. 

Behind her, young fig trees rustled in the dry breeze and the chorus of birds that had so heralded the morning, quietened underneath the buzz of the noon-day heat.  

The dome of a golden citadel shimmered above the turrets of the wall, but all around her, she could see no one. The magnificent wood was too thick for her to knock and be heard, and there seemed to be no guard in the watchtowers built at intervals along the fortress. How did one make their presence known in these parts?

The old farmer had told her a wealthy man owned the sea of sugar that ran into the stretching horizon, as well as an extensive library famed for its breadth and depth of learning.  The man himself was supposedly very wise, a wide-traveled man reputed equally for the magnanimity with which he treated the laborers of his fields as the ferocity with which he crushed any challenge to the superiority of his sugar empire.

Perhaps he was a person to guide the pilgrim back to the correct path to the coast-lands.

“Have no fear, you will not be lost long!” her host the farmer had cheerfully declared just that morning, as he had poured her a cup of a pungent dark coffee that they shared for break fast. The pilgrim, used to milk, frowned at the uncertainty of both these affairs.