Halfway

Imagine that you are standing in a knee-deep bog. You don't know how it became so deep, and you have a very hard time making any forward motion. The last thing you remember is running, freely through a field of tall grass and blue skies. But, now, all you see is grey and seafoam green in every direction.

Directly in front of you is a small pile of boulders. You have to climb them. You've climbed higher mountains before, this is no big deal, but you don't really know how to start this sort of thing from knee-high mud. They are just a few steps away, but you find that ever since the mud rose, your steps have been far shorter than normal.

You stand for half a minute, looking up at the grey. You search for blue, you search for a break in the clouds. That's the funny thing about clouds, you can never tell how thick they are. Sometimes, the entire sky will be completely grey, and some rogue wind current will brush away a thin layer of cloud, as if to remind you that there are other colors out there. But, today, there seems to be no friendly wind, or if there is, then the clouds are just too thick.

You stare anyway, maybe there will be a bird. You haven't seen much sign of life beyond the odd frog or beetle for a very long time. Sometimes you think that you can hear a goose, or maybe a loon, but they're always on the other side of the fog.

You remember when you had traveling companions, but it seems like you lost them somehow. Did they give up? Just, drop themselves into the muck and not get back up? Did they drown? Did they stumble at some point, and fall face first into the bog? If they did, then why didn't you help them? Why didn't you go back and pick them up?

You can't stand for too long, or else you begin to sink, so you press on, getting closer to the boulder pile ever second. You think about how, maybe, you'll get halfway there before you can rest, and then only be able to get halfway and then halfway again, and then halfway again. You giggle to yourself. Maybe you could prove Zeno right. One of your friends would have laughed at that one. If only you could remember who.