The Vision

When I came out of the house, the rain and the wind had departed. The house stood on the edge of the mountain, poised on the cliff under a brooding sky. The ground fell away beyond the backyard.  Whoever built the house had hewn the backyard out of the rocky growth that made up this side of the mountain. The stone was pitted and ravaged by time, and cold to touch, and my feet cringed when I walked over to the fence. 

The woman was sitting on the fence, silhouetted against the dull sky.  She turned towards me, her eyes opened, and she looked towards the house. The house stood still. I stretched my hand and touched her. She fell. She fell, her eyes open and the hair streaming up, she fell. 

I looked down. There was nothing there on the other side of the fence, no swirling tangle of trees, no rivers, no valley. Just her, a dwindling shadow in infinite fall.  

There was no world there, no movements or time, not even emptiness, but just an absence. The house behind me wasn't there either, I knew, nor did I exist.The world and time had not begun yet. 

The foundations of the world were not yet laid.