Stones of the Story

I have taken the image from many years ago and messed around with it.

Author's Note
Yesterday's piece was an introduction to a much longer story. What follows from here may not be as finished and tight, as it is me working out the rest of the story - or at least parts of it.

The First Passage

Dr. Elena Thompson approached Mên-An-Tol not for the first time, but for the first time in many years. The early morning mist shrouded the moors softening the edges of the stone circle. She approached and ran her fingers over the rough grey granite of the holed stone tracing a weathered surface that had been witness to many centuries of whispered secrets. She had had an interest in this site for many years cataloguing the many stories, myths and legends told about it. She almost knew them all by heart. But today was different. Today she was to test the myths and legends.

Over the years she had been meticulous in her researches, and most of the tales were the same or so similar as not to make any difference. Nine passages through the stone the villagers of Morvah said. Nine times and the boundary between the worlds would thin. The granting of a wish. Entry to the realm of fairies. She knew how ridiculous it all sounded. She was after all an archaeological historian, and yet here she was about to engage in what most folks and her colleagues would think of as pure folklore. There the stone stood with a perfectly circular hole through the centre. The hole worn smooth by countless hands, countless passages, through countless years. Sunlight struck the stone shining through the hole casting a perfect circle of light before her. Elena took a deep breath and approached the stone. She reached out and touched the stone with trembling fingers. The granite felt warm, almost alive, as her fingers made contact. She knelt before the stone and positioned herself carefully, working out the best angle required to pass through the hole.

This first passage was slightly awkward. Elena felt her shoulder scrape against the edges of the hole. Tiny bits of lichen caught in her dark hair. As she pushed forward she was expecting a tight squeeze, and perhaps a graze or two. But it was different - something changed. For moments so brief that she would later question its happening - the world seemed to shimmer. The mist appeared to change texture becoming thicker, more substantial. At the very edge of hearing was a sound, the whisper of distant wind chimes - or so it seemed.

When she emerged on the other side everything looked the same. The same flat moorland. The same distant remains of a tin mine. The same early morning mist. And yet different. There at her feet lay a single white feather that had not been there before. Not a seagull's feather. Not a crows - that would be black. Something... different. Elena picked it up, her academic mind already analysing. Even so beneath her rational exterior something was stirring, something strange, a tremor of anticipation, of yet unknown possibilities.

She knew she could not stop now. She had completed the first passage, now there were eight more waiting.