“What are you thinking about?” His mother would ask him whenever he looked up at the sky.

“I’m not sure,” he would answer. It was the truth. His thoughts were nearly impossible to describe using proper words.

One afternoon, during his lunch break from work, he sat on the park bench and stared at the deep blue sky. A stranger sat down beside him. “You have a great destiny to fulfill.”

Slowly, he turned and faced the stranger. He frowned. “What?”

The stranger, an old man with white hair and a white beard that extended to his chest, inhaled deeply before he spoke the word, “come.”

The old man stood up and walked away while he remained on the bench. I will not follow this stranger, he told himself even though his instincts were compelling him to do otherwise. In the end, he decided to follow.

He kept close, a few paces behind as the old man strolled along the path in long strides. At the curve, the old man deviated from the path and descended a steep hill. He nearly slipped a few times while the old man kept constant pace, never faltering a single step. As the hill leveled, he arrived before a cave.

He pulled out his phone and turned on the light. The cave was filled with drawing and the longer he stared at the drawings, the more familiar the drawings became. “This is of my life.” He gasped and turned to the old man. “Have you been spying on me?”

The old man shook his head, “No, dear boy, these were drawn before you were even born. You are the chosen one.”

He ran his fingers across the cave wall, across the drawings. Most of them involved him looking at the sky and suddenly, he couldn’t remember how many times he had stared at the sky, trying to conjure up a single coherent thought. Finally, he muttered, “Chosen for what?”

The old man sighed, “Life is a great labyrinth, a mystery. There is no way to know your tasks until it is presented to you.”

“But how will I know?” There was no reply, only drops of water hitting the floor of the cave. He turned around, the old man was gone.

A response to MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie’s Photo Challenge.