Here’s something a bit odd. I was fiddling with my phone and looking within MS Word and it presented ‘something you opened recently’ which, initially, I had no recollection of opening, let alone writing.

I’m not sure of even what it is supposed to mean. Is it a full piece of flash or is it a planned beginning? I honestly don’t know. But I hardly post anything these days, and since it sort of beckoned me I thought I’d give it some air. Make of it what you will ….

*

The Blocked Path

 

The first stones appeared almost imperceptibly, like the faint whispers of birds in the valley below, his attention to them initially subconscious as they gradually accumulated at a specific point on the well-worn mountain trail.

Jakob first properly noticed them on a crisp autumn morning, the small rocks carefully placed to narrow the path leading down from his high pasture. He nudged them aside with his weathered boot, still thinking little of it.

 

But as the weeks passed, the stones multiplied. Not scattered randomly, but positioned with an unsettling precision that spoke of intention. Branches now intertwined with the rocks, creating a lattice that seemed too deliberate to be natural. His sheep huddled closer to the rough-hewn sheepfold, their usual restless bleating replaced by an eerie silence.

 

“Nonsense,” Jakob muttered to his own imagination, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. But he’d lived on this mountain for twenty-three years, known every crevice, every wind pattern. Something felt different now. Something felt wrong.

 

The local constable in the valley dismissed his concerns when Jakob rode down one Wednesday. “Probably mountain goats,” the young man said, not looking up from his paperwork. “Or maybe some kids playing a prank.”

 

But Jakob knew. These weren’t random obstructions. Each day, the blockage grew more complex. Branches woven into the stonework like intricate tentacles, rocks balanced with mathematical precision. By the following Saturday, the path had narrowed to barely a shoulder’s width, the debris rising like a carefully constructed wall.

 

His oldest ram, a battle-scarred creature named Gunnar, stood at the edge of the flock, facing the blocked path. Alert and protective as always, but now unnervingly still. Jakob watched the animal’s ears—they twitched, not from wind or sound, but from something else. Something unseen.

 

Night brought no comfort. Sounds drifted up the mountain—not wind, not animal. Something deliberate. Scraping. Soft footsteps. The careful placement of something heavy.

 

On the seventh day, Jakob decided to wait. He positioned himself where the mountain trail bent, rifle across his knees, watching the blockage. Hours passed. The moon traced its arc across the star-studded sky.

 

Just before dawn, a sound. A snap of a twig. Movement.

 

“I know you’re there,” Jakob called, his voice carrying the weight of decades of mountain solitude.

 

Silence answered.

 

Then a voice. Familiar. A voice he hadn’t heard in twenty-five years. A voice that brought back memories of fire, of accusation, of a long-forgotten conflict that the mountain had seemingly swallowed.

 

“Hello, Jakob,” the voice said. “It’s been a long time.”

 

The blockage was more than stones and branches. It was a message. A confrontation decades in the making.

 

And the mountain, as always, would bear witness.