Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 17

Julian and Joakim jumped in the vernacular and felt instantly safe. They shared the cabin with only two other people. The woman wore a ridiculous flowery dress, but the man topped it by dressing up in more ceremonial than traditional lederhosen. He must have been an alcoholic because the first thing he did when they went down is take a tremendous tug from a flask of Schnapps. He proposed a toast to Joakim, while mumbling something incoherent. Julian, in the meantime, was entertaining the woman by inspecting all the dirty windows..

The trip took its time, but the rhythmic swelling and lulling of the sound of gears and motors eased the wait whenever they passed one of the support towers. Joakim became uneasy and started fidgeting with his fingers. He wanted to get out. He would complete his task when he brought Julian down, but something about entering the base station was threatening. If only there was a sign to tell him what to do. Joakim checked how far they were off the ground. Coincidentally, the ground rose very close to the cabin at that moment. When he refocused, he noticed someone had written a word on the filthy window. It said jump.

Joakim did not hesitate. He flipped the emergency door lock switch, pulled open the door and jumped out. He hit the grass hard and rolled over multiple times. He ended up on his back just in time to see Julian look at him from the door opening. Then the elderly man pulled him back inside and the door closed again.

After getting up Joakim could see the base station a mere hundred meter below. There was also a steep precipice between where he stood and the foot of the mountain. Down below he saw three police vehicles surround the base station. Joakim assumed Julian would find his way home, but he hated to think what would have happened if he had stayed. Until now, most people had not given him the benefit of the doubt when it came to situations he could not quite explain himself. His original plan of going to the authorities and getting back his identity did not seem to be the best strategy for now. He could not go back to the hotel and he did not want to go back to Georg either. That hideout out there did not appeal to him one bit, Georg only knew him as an eccentric vagabond and it would not take him one step closer to normal life. Next to that, the crow people were also walking around there.

Kalisa was also still out there. Or wasn't she? A woman appears in his dreams, then walks out of a cave like that is a normal thing to do. She then disappears to show up at exactly the right moment to find the hideout where she fights off another set of vague characters. And let's not forget that it was Kalisa who talked him into entering a book shop dressed as a painting of a mountain. Joakim was going bat-shit crazy, that is what was going on. He was going to have to leave the mountain and all its follies behind him.

The motive was identical to that of his motivation to go to the mountain. To get the hell away from people and their demands on him. Although he did not get the chance to flee to the mountain himself before getting drugged and dragged here. Now, Joakim felt free, though. He had relieved himself of the burden of taking care of the child. He found this his secret hideout which did not seem to contain any information worth following up on. He hoped the crow people had found what they wanted and could leave Joakim the hell alone.

The first days as a vagabond were difficult. He got a lift on a lorry to a nearby town, there he found a youth hostel that allowed him to stay for free in return of cleaning services and giving meditation classes to the traveling youths. As the resident Buddhist, he found some dignity again. That was a good first step, but he also had to take one step further to allow him to reintegrate into society again. He had to save up money somehow. The situation he was in at the hostel was a disguised form of slavery. Nobody held him there, but he had to work for sustenance and there was no surplus so he could go nowhere else. Except that he could, of course. It was his own choice to stay in this slavery. 

In one of his meditation classes there was a young woman who had traveled from Italy who had left her country for a grand tour around Europe. Once leaving her home country, the motivation to go much further left her. But what she lost in homeland territory, she gained in experience, which she shared with Joakim. She knew of a nearby organic farm that welcomed people from all walks of life to help out with the farming. The work itself did not pay but they would get a cut from sales of the produce. They took Joakim in without a fuss and slowly he made a life for himself.

Life on the farm and in the hostel was satisfying and meaningful in the sense that he seemed to stir the brain cells of the traveling youngsters and helped produce sustainable vegetables. But there was a limit to which he could grow himself, without knowing which soil he came from.