Secretive - Bucky Barnes

10 || Number Seven

[Nova]

I cannot entirely believe what I am seeing.

Not even when I stand right in front of it.

In the middle of nowhere, the middle of a land of ice and snow on almost the very top of the mountain, invisible for me for the past hours, there is a temple.

A small one. A Japanese temple. I do not know how to react to this. Should I laugh? Should I cry? What should I do?

It has two stories, each with a dark green ceiling. The piles holding it together are really made of marble, unusual for the culture, I think. One could get into it by crossing the front staircase, on which sides the first columns hold up the square roof. Then, there are two large, black doors, with absolutely nothing engraved in them, nothing portraying what this is or should be or who it built. No sign of any living person, no matter how long I let my glance draw circles across the non-flat area. The temple is built on squared stone, the only thing in here that would pass a test with a water level.

The entire building has decorations of gold, and seems totally clean so far, completely untouched by rough winds and snow and any kind of weather up here, and completely untouched by humans. No rubbish, no fingerprints or lost devices. This cannot be a tourist attraction; there would be so many people in here.

It is beautiful, but making me anxious. Now, finally, I feel like I arrived. Whatever it means. I think I was meant to be here; the choir, the hand, it wanted me to be here. The pressure disappeared once I stood in his front, solved into nothingness, no hint of it having existed a all. But why? Why would they drag me all the way from London to a small temple on top of a mountain in the South-East end of Japan?

Sighing, I figure there is nothing to do for me but to go into it. I did not make the entire way for half-answers, did I? And the enchantment is gone as well. Like they were made to lead me here, succeeded and finished the job.

Step by step, I walk up the last few metres, then slowly the solid stairs. I cannot identify any windows in there, but there is a small slit where the first rounded ceiling meets the second, likely to bring in some light and fresh air.

Crossing the piles on either side of the staircase, an unnerving feeling flows through every inch of my stomach. I cannot tell where it comes from, but I get really, really nervous about this, not sure anymore it has been the right decision to follow something that simply was in my head. Something no one else knew about.

And no one else will find my corpse up here if I am going to die today.

Nonetheless, I continue moving.

When I reach the main platform, I put down the shirt I wrapped around my head. The wind will not be present inside, and I need my full sentences for whatever is about to come. Sticking it into the rucksack, I scan the area one more time, just to be sure. And like I thought, there is no one around but me. So, I take another step forward, inhaling deeply to collect myself, before pushing one of the giant black doors open.

Light falls merely from the open peak through the door, and from the thin open bar where one roof meets the other. I can barely see a thing when I peek my head through, but it seems quiet so far. I hold my breath searching for the noises of others, but there are none, so I slip through the gap and stay close to the moving door, separating me from the outside world with a numb mpfh.

It is dark for another second, and I hesitate to move. In tension. In awaiting. In trying to figure out where I landed.

Then, I shrug when on the very far end of the hall, two fires are lit up on the left and right wall, in a round metal bowl hovering on wooden stacks above the ground.