Into the wood

Ambrose stepped carefully across the old stone bridge. The light behind him only served to make the path ahead even murkier. Sounds of insects filled the air around him as he entered the grove. His shoes pressed against the damp soil, covered in dead leaves, as he marched into the darkness.

He felt something crawling on his leg and jerked it violently to rid himself of whatever it could be. He began to slowly feel other insects creeping all over his body. His neck, his chest, his arms.

Ambrose flailed helplessly, breaking into a run as he tried to shake off the unwanted pests, dropping his flashlight by accident. His foot slipped on the damp, muddy ground and sent him down on his back. He groaned, half covered in mud and dirt. He kept slapping whatever he felt on his skin, and felt overall disgusting. He approached the stream that passed through the grove and took the opportunity to clean his hands and the back of his head.

'Why the hell did I even come here? I should just go back.' Ambrose, despite thinking this, kept on going, now slightly less panicked with the bugs, although still feeling immund.

He walked upstream, far enough away from the bank so as to not step on uneven soil. His shoes met with some unseen rocks, nearly causing him to fall on his face.

'Why do I keep going deeper into these woods? I can barely see anything and I don't even know how long I've walked. It's too dark.'

He was, in a way, quite lost. Although he had a rough idea of what he had done to get there, getting out would not be easy.

Thus, he kept going, hoping to leave the wood through the stream and make it back before it got too dark.

Ambrose saw in the distance a structure of wood on a stone base. 'An abandoned shack? All the way in here?' He approached it and saw it had no walls. Upon further inspection, he noticed the structure to be heavily eastern in design, a pergola of sorts. He walked underneath it, puzzled. 'A shack would already be odd in here, but this?' He thought.

The wood was tattered and the carvings on the stone were fading, as moss and dirt collected on it. 'Who built this? Was it my grandfather?' He knealt to observe the carvings further. They made a complete image, yet Ambrose found no meaning in it. He noticed then just how tired he really was from walking, now that he had stopped for a moment. He sat down to rest.

His heavy eyelids closed on their own, against his will. He sat in absolute darkness, as thoughts flooded his mind. Irrelevant, inconsequential thoughts that kept invading his conscious mind.

They, however, gave way to a single train of thought, which began echoing in his mind. 'Was the path that I took here one that I decided, or was that predetermined?' Ambrose paused, unsure. 'Surely it was my own choice. Why else would I come here? But didn't I want to leave? Why didn't I? Why am I even thinking about this?'

As he shook away the thought, another took its place. 'Was there a reason for me to come? I felt something pulling me in earlier. How do I explain it? Something like a thread, connecting me and this place. A web of causality that led me here. Is there a way to understand it? How far does the web reach?' The insects, the soil, the river, had all led him there. 'What does it mean?'

He sat blankly on the pergola. Strangely, he did not feel the bugs crawling on his body. Nothing, except a subtle warmth on his skin. His mind raced, partly trying to ignore these questions and partly attenpting to make sense of them.

A voice, barely recognisable to Ambrose as his own, called out a string of thoughts. 'Could this web extend beyond simple happenstance? If there exists an underlying connection between all things, then these may become stonger or weaker depending on external factors. Is there a way to manipulate these connections? Is there a way to even notice them and how they work? Would you be able to predict the future based on these connections, or do something even more insane?' The issue began escaping his understanding as it became even more complex. His mind went to a simpler problem. 'So, assuming all things are connected in a web of causality, which would work on a ultimately universal scale, does that mean that in the grand scheme of things, nothing could truly be created, or added on top of what already is?' An axiom formed in his head. 'For all that is gained, something must be lost.' He paused to consider the weight of those words. 'To lift something, you must give away energy. To learn something, you must give away time. Is anything that is gained without something given in exchange an illusion? Is there a perfect proportion to the exchange and can it be skewed towards one end? Can the connections between things be key in this process?'

In his mind there were now two axioms. 'All things are connected in a web of causality.' and 'For all that is gained, something must be lost.' They united in his mind to form a third. 'The connections between things determine the exchange.'

Ambrose felt his eyes jump alive, and he was taken aback my what he saw. He saw the grove clearly, without the murk and darkness. Further so, he saw ethereal threads flowing between everything, some strong, others flimsy.

He took them in and, to his surprise, he began to visualise several pathways, though he did not entirely know where they would lead him. He followed the one which he thought was strongest and more reliable. Rather, he felt compelled to follow it. 'What's happened?'

He failed to notice, however, that the pergola had somehow become lustrous and restored.

He began an odd journey back to the estate.