Tiny Door

      When I first laid eyes on it, I couldn’t believe my good fortune:  For too long have I sought it out or at least something similar to it and for too long have I been disappointed by one dead end after another.  Hopefully, what I’ve longed for all of these years will be found on the other side of this magnificent and majestic portal.  Staring at what I assume to be elfish in origin, I wondered how this ancient door had gone unnoticed, especially given the amount of foot traffic that Central Park experiences at this time of year.
      As I peered around the crowded park, I noticed a yellow leaf lazily dancing to the rhythm of unseen air currents before landing atop a carpet of variously colored leaves that already blanketed the ground.  No one but myself seemed to notice this Leafs merry decent to Earth and so too was the case with the tiny gateway which was built into the base of a tree.  Even as I leaned forward to delight in its texture, none of the visitors to the park that day so much as looked up from their newspaper or their latest round of Frisbee golf or whatever activity in which they were engaged at that moment to share in the joy that this find promised.  Stroking the wood grain with my fingertips, I imagined the doors history, as if I had lived it myself in some past life.  Running my hand over the brass hinges and matching doorknob, I sensed an energy far greater than anything I had experienced on Earth, but I couldn’t determine whether this sensation was real or imagined.  Perhaps the excitement was getting the best of me and my perception of reality was skewing into one in which I would deem as ideal.
      Withdrawing from the door, I watched as a rather large black beetle meandered near it, looking as if it would have had difficulty passing through its miniscule frame had the beetle attempted such a thing.  As this shiny, black and quite indifferent intruder probed the door with its antennae, my mind wandered, picturing the bug as a means of conveyance for the inhabitants of the world beyond.  Much like the cowboys of the Wild West, I imagined small elfish creatures astride beetles, ants, centipedes and other domesticated insects:  Traversing a landscape as foreign to mankind as are the deepest parts of the Worlds oceans or the surfaces of other planets in our own Solar System.
      These thoughts were of course antiquated, for as the Earth had changed since the last tales of elves were written so too must have the worlds upon which these stories were based.  Why would Earth have undergone such transformations as the Industrial Revolution, Women’s suffrage, the marches on Washington, WWI and II, space travel and undersea exploration and the world beyond this door remain stagnant in time?  Of course there would be change, but I hoped that it would not have been to such a degree that I find most places unrecognizable:  I hoped that after a hundred plus years, I could utter the incantation that would help me find my way back home.

The End

Epilogue:

Now, if I could only remember where I put my shrinking powder.


Word count: 546