illustration video for a short story:
All Roads
I am lost.
I was only walking in the woods – not exploring – and it was only a moment, cutting one corner off the established path, across a trickle of a stream to avoid an incline and… Maybe if had retraced my steps right at that moment I would have found my way back, but why would I? It’s a wood, you can lose your way but you can’t actually get lost, as all roads lead to Rome, all woodland trails loop back to the car park. All except this one it turned out, this one went somewhere else. I walked on, following the new path strictly, confident I would find some exit that way even it wasn’t quite the one I had started out from.
There was no exit though, no point where the trees even thinned, in fact as I progressed they seemed to grow thicker. I knew the wood well enough and that it wasn’t this dense or large, but I also knew where I had driven to, where I should be, so instead of turning back I simply shrugged it off, kept following the path.
I grew tired, then exhausted and then pained from all the walking, and the trees just grew thicker and tighter. First so tight they seemed to form walls and then so tight they definitely did. Further on these walls flattened and smoothed and were shaped into great wooden buildings. As the trees closed in the trails widened, straightened, hardened, became roads between the wooden towers, became a town filled with strangers, became a city filled with strange sounds.
I no longer know where I am, or even where I should be. I am lost and however far I follow the roads I never get to Rome.
