An echoing crack, as timber splits about our heads. A chunk of slate careens downwards, splintering branches as it goes. More follow, smaller fragmentations tailed by clouds of grey dust. Somewhere above the treeline, the side of a mountain is falling away.
The instinct is to break for cover. But whatever danger the falling rocks pose, they are at least material. A more eternal threat is just now shaking loose the threadbare bonds of the physical. The mountain groans as its prisoner begins to awake.
Paddy Dobson
22nd October 2020