Inner Legacy by Douglas Stuart Page B

grew and the more I wrestled with thoughts about dreams and reality the heavier I seemed to become the more grounded by gravity. I wondered if I had dreamt the floating.
    I sat down beneath the tree and struggled with doubt and confusion until I grew thirsty and hungry.
    I squatted beside the river and scooped up water until my thirst was quenched and then looked around for food. There had to be something edible. I scanned the river bank and my surroundings and saw nothing. I couldn't identify the trees that were scattered thinly on either side of the river, none seemed to hold any fruit.
    Darkness began to fall and I huddled against the tree my hunger only partly sated by the water I had drunk. I fell into a fitful sleep gnawed at by hunger and doubt.
    I woke with the first rays of the sun and decided I must explore the valley to try and find food of some sort. I was disappointed to be honest that there was none lying there as there had been so often in the days gone past. My doubts grew and as I trekked away from the rising sun across the river towards the mountainside in the distance my body seemed to grow heavier under the weight of doubt and confusion. I had a half baked plan to get to the side of the valley and begin to walk all the way round it seeking both food and a way out of the place.
    I stumbled and fell many times as I headed towards the mountainside which rose out of the verdant green of the plain like a rock wall.
    Towards noon with what seemed like miles and miles to go I sat down. I tried hard to move my mind back to that wonderful sense of wholeness and lightness of being I had known just over twenty hours earlier. Back to the place I had been in mentally before confusion and doubt had taken hold of my being and cast me down into this heaviness. Even the sun seemed to shine less brightly than it had done and the colours seemed to have a tendency to fade to grey in my peripheral vision.
    I gave myself a physical slap on the face in a vain attempt to knock some sense into my being. I looked around me and saw an idyll. A paradise. Yet I was burdened and unable to see properly what was around me. I shook myself mentally and physically trying to shake off this growing darkness around my soul. I doubted, oh how I doubted everything. There would be no food, no help, no floating, no future, I was alone in madness on this soft green grass where now I laid my head in despair.
    As the day wore on I gave myself over to self pity and doubt and darkness. Fear was gone but I was being swallowed by blackness. I lay down to die.
    All was lost, I was without hope. Abandoned and alone. I had no will left and lay there asking to die. I gave up and waited to die.
    And night came and curled its own darkness around my prone body and I longed for sleep. At some point I fell into the arms of sleep.
    I dreamed a dream.
     
    I fought in my dream and a great shadowy figure as strong  a man as ever I have wrestled. His name was doubt and we fought throughout the night. We wrestled and struggled until I grew weak neither of us able to overcome the other. Towards dawn he grew extremely black in form and that seemed to give him renewed strength over me and I felt myself begin to lose the battle of the night. He started to push me backwards and I felt my strength begin to ebb and fade. I was lost. I would lose this battle against this mighty foe whose only words had been grunts or whispers in my ear about his victory and the hopelessness of my struggle. Just when all was lost I felt the first light of the sun begin to disperse the gloom and warm my back and caress my head and this seemed to give me an extra strength and I was able to push this shadowy figure towards the river. I was winning slowly but surely and after much effort we were on the very bank of the river itself. I gave a mighty push and I saw and felt him begin to slip from the banking into the river and as his great feet plunged into the water his feet began to disperse