Touch ground, hands in the dirt. You're running your fingers through stardust, shaking the remnants of a distant reality through your thick skull. Get it knocked into you if you want to stay up, want to stay alive. Let the knowledge permeate you, let it cook you. Turn up the heat a little to accelerate the decay. Processes, rate driven, bring about the changes that you need.
The walk home is equally parts long and short, best measured in terms of personal growth. The tower, dark and menacing, cuts an imposing figure behind. It almost temps you backwards, capturing your shadow with outstretched arms. The road is dry. There is nothing to do but let the boredom ruminate, let the starlight glimmer. You're clutching the treasures to your chest, limping on legs wounded. You essence is scattered. You must be leaking out, leaving pieces of yourself as breadcrumbs to mark the path. Survival is a matter of determination, not prevarication. We take more steps despite the frail bones. We struggle onwards. With tongues out, we bare our teeth against the monsters.
The road is lonely, despite the dozens of similar travellers. We all walk the same road, the same purpose. The road cuts in a straight line, never splitting or joining another. Despite this, we are all going to and from different places. This is obvious from the very look of us. We brace for the impacts in different ways. Some clutch at fire, burning through their clothes and food and flesh, desperately keeping the chill out. Knives bared flash and the beasts retreat backwards, their grasping tendrils leaking foul ichor. You take no precautions but a head held high. Fear banished by denial. You bear witness to no dangers, quickly averting your eyes as the others disappear before them.
Wings fold up and plummet as they pluck birds from the sky. The moon is loud and angry. It is full of hate. It screams about the death of its siblings. It gathers the storm clouds and the lightning. Fangs crooked, it carves great blades from the cosmos to trap and ensnare the very soul. When it descends, sure as anything it will destroy you. You can feel its heat rising on your neck, the intensity of its gaze. How it longs for that which you desperately clutch with cold and shaking fingers. No matter how tightly you cradle your heart, it will cease someday. Perhaps soon.
Growth is measured in steps taken, in the distance travelled. Your sins, laid out as sideshows to the path, are witnessed by all. Roadside attractions flicker together, each as meaningless as the last. The largest failure ever seen becomes the small success becomes the hall of those left behind. With a laugh and a skip, they chase each other off the path and through parts of you. They weave between your ears, skipping around bones. You feel them under your skin, the bumps roving over your flesh, merely trailed by cracking skin and searing pain.
It's okay because it's part of the process. It's okay because this is how we improve. It's okay because you still have legs and so you can still walk, despite the blades in your back. It's okay. You'll be okay. You're going home.