Isolation
Selection from the prologue of Isolation, Book Two of my as-yet-unpublished novel Echoes of a Future Truth.
[…]
Awareness of his surroundings slowly came back to him; of the small, barrel-vaulted church, the wide barren slope surrounding it, and the cliffs above and below. The close echo of the mostly empty room gave a tin-pot resonance to the sound of the sea that came in through two small windows, and of the sharp wind that carved the impermanent rocks and brought ocean moisture to the hard grasses. At one time, a seashell held this sound to the ear of a curious child; the man must have grown smaller than the boy, or the shell larger, that the adult and all his dreams could fit inside.
Turning suddenly, he moved to leave. As he stepped past the thin steel door, disappointment came upon him as it always did when crossing this threshold. Weakly, he sank into the depression worn in the old marble step, and leaned wearily against the doorpost. His hands were clenched. What he wouldn’t give to look into a living face, one not over-darkened by devotion.
[…]
image … Church in Flower, circa 1942, woodcut, by Spyros Vassiliou