A horse head exquisitely entombed into a photo of a tree, with its eye peering out looking at everyone. ‘There was once this angel embodied into this element, and you will have to tell me which one it is. I fear that I have lost the tablet that contained the words you will need in order to figure this out.’
You walk along a path, there is a graveyard in front of you. Walking up to a tomb, you see a concrete angel. Inscribed on this tomb are the letters of your love. They are perfectly spelled out, and you run your fingers across the letters. As you do this, they change, to the letters of your mother’s name. These two women, they embody this element.
When you leave the graveyard, you continue along on the path and come to an open field, where a horse is gently eating some grass. As you walk up to it, a man yells at you “on guard!” He carries a long sword, heavy shield, and almost all of him is in armor. You realize at that moment you are about to be in war, but have no idea why. This man is angry, waving his sword around screaming about why he wants you dead. This man, he embodies the element that you seek.
As he approaches you, your life flashes before your eyes, and all beginnings become endings, and all endings become beginnings. Your life becomes a series of mistakes and misadventures, all lined up to show you that you are nothing but a failure. When he reaches you, he throws you to the ground, and puts his sword up to your throat. ‘Do you want to die, or do you want to suffer?’ You don’t consider them to be very prudent options, and ask for your life. ‘Good, then you will suffer.’ He removes his sword from your throat, and waves for you to pass by him. ‘Why are you letting me go?’ You ask as you rise to your feet. ‘Because fools like you make yourselves suffer more than anyone could burden you with.’
You glance behind you as you continue down the path, and he is still standing there glaring at you. In front of you now, is a large forest fire. It has consumed most of the area that you can see, and wonder if your element is fire. A woman walks up to you, tells you that you are never accountable for your actions, that you have become a professional at getting out of the responsibility that most adults posses. She then leaves you standing there with your mouth open, as police arrive to ask you how the fire began. You try to explain to them that you had nothing to do with it, but they search you and find matches, see the soot on your hands from where you had to dig around to find things to start this fire with. They handcuff you and tell you that you have killed people with our reckless actions, and ask you what punishment you want to be served to you. One of the officers recommends death, he represents the element that you are seeking.
You begin crying and begging for your life, explaining to them that there was a woman that walked out of the forest right after you first saw the fire, but they are not hearing you, instead they drag you through the soot and ashes to a place suitable to kill you. The officer that represents your element takes out his 9mm, and holds it to your head. At this moment, everything you have ever said mean to anyone comes to light in your head. Every time you told your mother you hate her, every unkind word you ever spoke to your love, it’s all there. You can not only hear it, but you see their faces as you say it to them. The officer asks you ‘do you want to die, or do you want to suffer?’ You beg for your life again, and he pulls the gun away from your head. You fall to the ground crying. ‘Men like you, they always suffer, their demons, they brought on themselves.’
You rise from the ashes and soot, and begin walking again toward the path, as you reach it, the woman comes up to you again. ‘How did you enjoy being accused of something you didn’t do, coming from a man that will not take responsibility for what he DOES do?’
You watch her as she walks away from you, she does not embody the element you seek.
You continue down the path, and are now greeted by an old man with no shoes on his feet. He walks up to you and asks if he can have your shoes. ‘May I walk in your shoes?’
You grimace at him and keep walking, and water begins falling everywhere. Not rain drops, but buckets and buckets of water. You are drenched in seconds. You try to run to get out of it, but there is no escape, and now the ground is getting muddy and slippery. You begin to fall every other step, and it’s not letting up. Just then you see the old man again. ‘May I walk in your shoes?’ He asks again. You look at him strangely ‘they are wet though.’ He laughs ‘a wet shoe, is still a shoe, is it not?’ angrily, you take them off, and hand them to him. As you do, every time you were ever materialistic comes back to you. Every poor person you walked past on the street, every time you spent money on something that you didn’t need, but told someone else you couldn’t help them out, was right before your eyes.
The moment he puts your shoes on, it becomes sunny again. You rise to your feet, and begin walking the path again. You get further down, when you see 4 men on horses blocking your path ahead of you. As you approach them, they ask you what element you seek. You tell them you don’t know. They ask you again “what element do you seek?” You tell them you are not sure. One of them gets off his horse, and begins screaming at you in your face. He is calling you every name you have ever heard in your life, and suggesting your parents weren’t married when you were born. When he finishes, the leader leans down and says “what element do you seek?”
You sigh.. “I am not water, for I do flow at a constant pace, I AM relentless in my pursuit, but I waver in my ability. I am not air, I do not fill, but rather deflate, I learned that by the words I spoke to my mother and love on many occasions. I am not fire, for when truly pressed, I do not continue to burn like an ember, I am extinguished.”
All four of the men move out of your way as you finish “therefore, I must be earth, the dust of it, the water of it, the trees, the mountains, everything good, and everything bad. I am the murder that happens on the street, the chaos that occurs when gunshots are randomly fired, the government that shields the public eyes from the truth, the lion that stalks the innocent newly born gazelle, the painter that kills himself because he lost his muse, the fire that consumes a village that could never afford to rebuild, the tidal wave that kills thousands, the beggar on the street wanting nothing more than food, I am everything.”
Josephine Ranes 
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