Author's Note: Okay, I finished Pleasant View Park and said to myself, "Self, don't write any more of those until you've finished chapter ten of TCtFS." I really did make a good start on said chapter (about twenty percent, I would estimate), but then, being the weak-minded individual that I am, I said, "Okay, just one more!" It's short, but packed. I think it's actually the first thing I've ever written that really reflects the Romantic influences on my writing. As with my other short story, if you review, tell me what overall affect this has on you, because that's what I really like to hear. You all were so great reviewing PVP, I don't know how to express my gratitude, except to dedicate this story to all my awesome reviewers. That done, new readers will still be greedily welcomed.

In yonder cave lies safe a haven,

Where streams of the mountain are tapped.

There, three walls guard your life and riches.

There, twixt three your walls you're trapped.

I stood up and placed the thin book back onto the shelf, noting curiously as I did so that no poet's name graced the cover, and satagainto lean into my leather lounge chair. That plush lounge was my sanctuary, where my mind could always find rest midst the innumerable books that I'd collected over my lifetime.

The poetry had left me troubled. In retrospect, I examined my time on the earth, as people of great age are wont to do. Perhaps all my years were ending in desolation, I thought. From my perspective, the books were my riches and the lounge, my cave and my haven. Was I trapped there? This I pondered for some time. "What was the significance of the three walls?" I asked the darkness. Surely none can ask such questions whilst still hoping to sleep the night.

I eased myself up out of my chair of a sudden restlessness which entered me. My legs had grown weak and feeble, I noted with shame. Why did I even linger in the world, a mere shadow of my former self? I paced the lounge in quiet unrest.

Soft rugs gave comfortably under my steps. Finely finished oak wood trimmed the room, and not a single ray of light shone except to spring from the lone reading lamp beside my chair. Odd, I almost thought at the time. The lamp was not lit, yet somehow I could see. This thought did not find purchase within me, and my mind drifted into more melancholy contemplation.

Rain played its unique music upon the ground and ceiling and windows. At that time, I hated the noise. The water, which I loathed to touch me, further isolated me inside that prison of my joy. I willed it to stop, but the rain continued. I'd not have gone out had it quit, so it doesn't truly matter.

I turned back to my chair, determined to sit there unmoving until that unhealthy energy left my body in the state my flesh was then comfortable to be: weak, and immobile and useless.

As I turned to walk back, the window behind my chair shattered inward before my eyes. I beheld a blinding glare of white light. I know my mouth must have fallen open in fright or surprise or perhaps awe, though I can scarcely remember now. Inexplicable fears flooded through me, each more absurd than the next, but none of which can possibly stretch far enough away from conformity to reality than what next I perceived.

The raindrops halted in their fall to the water-drenched ground. Levitated by some unearthly power that I could not, at the time, fathom, they rose and, coming through the window into my room, formed patterns in the air as they began to dance. Like a flash of lighting that lingered, the night was gone, and bluish daylight cast its rays through the window through the raindrops that were spinning and drawing patterns in the air, giving birth to millions of rainbows that flooded my lovely lounge with their vulgar colors. Oddly, it was still no brighter than it had been in the night. The daylight was of something that was different than light. Some mental impression that even now I don't understand.

I looked down at my body, and my heart beat violently as my eyes viewed the vital body of a young man, rich with life and vigor. My heart felt different; it was young under that light; it was strong in its beating and rife with the passions of youth, all the intricate emotions that beg to be expressed, to utilize those useful mental and physical faculties to create and expand and live. My skin was tight, the wrinkles I had nearly become used to had faded away.

I looked up and suddenly the colors no longer offended but challenged me. Why, in every pattern of every cluster of raindrops I found new inspiration. In every myriad of design that shone on the wall I saw a portrait of the utmost expression of exuberance.

But the patterns dancing before me were not content to let me simply imagine what they might portray. In a blur of colorful motion they coalesced to form a detailed figure. The colors from the window toned that body's skin, and gave its hair color and its eyes expression. The droplets moved as if as human joints, animating that figure of an old, wrinkled man with wispy gray hair as he turned and sat in the chair. I watched perplexed as a pen and paper, also made of drops of water, flew into his hands and lowered along with them to his lap, where his hand moved erratically in writing. Often he'd cross out sentences, paragraphs, or even whole pages. A horrible scowl filled his face. I watched this scowl because it was beginning to change. It was subtle at first and then, when the figure dropped the scowl to let his face fall into a serious, immensely thoughtful expression, the lines, I could tell, where gradually smoothing. More and more, his serious countenance faded, and as it did so, his hand grew more active, his hair regained some of its color.

The man was now calm, tranquil, and still very thoughtful. At times he would look up from his paper and gaze for a while out the window, sitting reclined comfortably in his chair, before again giving motion to his slow but unfailing pen. He was content, I saw; simply being. There was nothing to draw him away from where he was, so there he stayed, writing and content to write until those wrinkles came again. Presently, he again grew younger.

Wispy hair shot through with gray became thick and vibrant. Eyes lined from years of laughter renewed themselves, ready for years more of mirth and happiness. Hands grown thin and lithe with age regained their muscled fullness. I noticed that he was now writing at easily twice the pace of the older man he'd been a moment before. There was more purpose in his posture, as well. Now longer was he reclining in comfort, never did he look up to view the scene outside his window; he seemed to need to accomplish, as though he had more to do as soon as he was done. For some time he remained this way, driven by need and aided by his vitality until, slowly, he changed once again.

His sharp cheeks swelled with youth, and his hair grew longer and fuller still, and his eyes shone with the brightness of contained passion. His hand worked furiously as it penned words onto the paper, and all the while he stared out the window, smiling and carefree, not even watching the words that flowed forth straight out from his heart to complete page after page of writing.

He turned his head to me and grinned, then abruptly melted into water and ran to the floor off the leather of my chair. Shards of glass flew up to my windowsill and were perfectly restored into square panes, and with the window again in place, the mysterious daylight vanished, to be replaced by night. Dreading what I would see, I looked down at my body in trepidation.

I woke with a start in my quiet lounge where I'd fallen asleep in my soft leather chair. I'd been searching for hours for the inspiration that would break through the block in my mind as I tried to write on the paper in my lap. I must have drifted off, I thought. Setting the pen and paper on the table beside me, I arose on my two strong young, twenty years-old legs, walked to the window, and thrust it open wide, the dream still fresh in my mind. I would let that window be the fourth wall, the entrance or exit to my freedom or my sanctuary, and would let the light of imagination flow in to be tapped like a pure mountain stream. Reminded then of the strange book of poetry, a gleam of irrational curiosity overcame me, and I walked to the bookshelf across the room and scanned its contents for the book I'd placed there.

I smiled to myself. That book hadn't yet been written.