#WritePhoto Solo Peak

August 10, 2017 — #writephoto, fiction, story

solo at the top

The course included exasperating coded directions to find the path.  Only the experts who had experience in mathematical code could make any sense of it.  The others gathered strength for the climb by resting, meditating, and stretching. The recruits knew they would not all be able to make the ascent to the peak. Some would not be in physical condition for the rigors of the steep hike.  Others could not resign themselves to the idea that only a few of them would survive the attempt to scale the sacred solo rock.

It was said that the surviving members of the party would be initiated into the noble society of knights of the vast horizon.  This powerful, yet underground fraternity required extreme loyalty as well as full secrecy from the membership as well as their families.  Sons usually followed fathers into the lodge.  Often the young disappeared during the testing phase, never to be found.  The most powerful worked hard to assure their progeny had the power and the accomplishments to inherit command upon death of a leader.

A complex game took place when a leader died or left.  The people believed that this process revealed the best person to step into the newly vacated position.  Potential candidates were summoned to the town square and given maps.  Each map was different and contained both real and bogus directions to reach the summit of solo peak.  The player who managed to climb to the overlook before sundown would be given the office.  The new leader left his mark on the rock then hurried back down to the village.

The trip back down the steep rocky path was the most treacherous part of the journey.  All the other candidates hide and do what they can to ambush and kill the new leader so they can claim the win.  The field is thinned to one  at the end.  Nobody is sure if the winner is the one they saw at the top of solo peak, or just the one who managed to kill the others and make it back to the village.  And that is how politics were born.

#writephoto

This story is in response to this week’s photo prompt on Sue Vincent’s Echo.  Please join us each Thursday to interpret her intriguing image.  It is fun to see how many different ways people use it.