The Keeper of Lost Souls

“ I felt like breath at her feet. Like the icy cold mist that lingered in the valley, was I the cold breath of Death?”

The fog hadn’t lifted for days yet every day she stood alone in the valley and watched and waited.

What she waited for seemed a mystery. She was alone; she had always been alone. There was nobody there who was meant to know she was waiting. Like waiting for the train that never arrived at the station she stood there day after day on a frosty verge of the valleys lonely platform.

I know she was there, I would see her walk the track she had worn for what may have been years. I watch her through the mist and fog as her slow and deliberate walk cut through its thickness then closed back in around her with every precise step.

She waits as I watch... I am the keeper of lost souls.

My own journey began in the valley of lost hope. It was so long ago that I cannot put a precise time on it. The time has faded from memory but the experience still remains. Now, watching the waiter; that was my experience also. And I don’t recall what or who I waited for. Yet every day I would wait in the valley of hope.

The outside world stands still when the one who waits appears. The world as they know it appears gone, lost and there in its self is the answer to a question. The waiter has closed their eyes to the world, closed out the possibilities and focused upon a future. They have stopped being alive and enjoying every moment and look beyond for dreams to come true. The fog surrounds them, as they no longer have a future because they forgot to have a past. And every day as they walk that well trodden path to the edge of their existence they watch and wait for what cannot be, and will not be.

The lost soul is then watched over by the keeper of lost souls, like death that awaits the final breath. The keeper of the souls watches and acts as a scribe, registering the time spent remembering their own time spent lost with a sense of no time.

If summer ever came to the valley, if a hint of light penetrated the mist, if one moment of thought could change that perpetual day, she alone could make something happen.

It was not my role to make her see or stand in her way, I could only watch and wait.

In its own way I too stood alone in that valley. I was there when she was there and not there when she was not. To my conscious thought I did not know where I was, when I was not there and on that day I began to wonder. And in that wondering I questioned whether I was there at all, or even existed. I wondered if I was her mirror or her dream or an illusion in another’s mind.

I began to wonder what would happen if I changed my thought, my out look on the valley of hope. So, I changed my thoughts on the images I did see.

Through the gray fog I began to visualise her with colour and as every day passed I reformed the image of this lost soul, adding animation to her gait. At first she would speed her journey, then run, skip or dance.

The surrounds I did change to colours of nature, yellows, reds and blues.

Earthy tones on the worn path dusted with verges of green. Her expressions became audible as she called out to the birds that fluttered above with springful joy. Yet every day she would stop at the edge of the valley somewhat forlorn that she was there and still waiting until one day when I had painted all the possibilities of light and life she took one step past the edge of the valley. One step that lead into another. Within a few steps more the woman stopped and she and I were standing facing one another.

As the woman’s face drifted into a memory I found myself walking. No path way there to guide my way, no fog or mist to blur my view. I walked on through the colours and sound and never looked back to the valley edge and never knew if I would see the woman again.

I was not the keeper of souls or watcher of waiters or death waiting on ominous decay. But, was I that woman who waited and watched for the self that simply reflected back.

If I had to think of that more, well, maybe the watcher will tell me more; if there is more to tell.

By Jane E Libeau