The hues of the landscape were blazing.

When mixed, they exuded a rich vitality that was comparable to the genesis of the sun and its light.

She didn’t come to comprehend this during her pilgrimage across the expanse of land.

Her mind had become too abstract; all rationality had now been discarded in favour of the colours before her.

It seemed as if her odyssey to this acute corner of the grounds amounted to so much more than it had done before. These steps had been imprinted into the grass dozens of times before. Her prints had been displaced, forgotten and discarded.

But she wanted to walk this path one final time, to consummate with the rain and its subsequent myriad of reflecting colours.

Her feet implanted themselves into the sodden grass. An osmosis of sound diminished as she stood on the precipice.

The view struck her with a sudden discordance. It was a profound triptych, one that encased the autumnal trees in a haze of translucency. It hindered her sight.

A cathedral dominated this tableau. Its steeple loomed a few hundred metres to the right, but this was an estimate. The lines of the building were dripping, as if the architecture could not withstand the virility of the rain, and the potency of its smell. She briefly complimented the sight, but knew she would have to run in the membrane of water that was relentless in its intention.

She didn’t ascertain that her feet were muddy and sodden until she started to run. The grass sunk into her pores as the mud diffused into the peeling layers of her skin. It could have been a substitute for shoes, had she paused to contemplate the implications of her chaotic descent onto the cathedral.

The former pain of knowing this was her final descent to the building transmitted into a less tangible emotion. Her acute fear of being a failed creator for this fragile moment diminished any consideration for her current state.

The rain gently baptised her with its circumference of melancholy and guile. It appeared to be a fitting testament, a descent that would be tinged with the sombre song of sadness. Her hair began to strangle her neck, and clung to the damp angles of her face in an act of defiance.

They seemed to take on the role of being roots in search of nourishment, with her skin being their source of vitality. The water halted their personal endeavours to separate, and her hair was as much a dark sheet of unknown substances as the rain was.

The rich colours of the leaves evaporated into a blur of abstract landscape. Surrounding buildings and stones that she has failed to see dissolved into their concealed structures.

The damp wood, the chipped stones that were tantamount to the fading glass panes that were delegated sparsely along the landscape. The rain diluted beauty, as did her desperate pursuit for the chapel doors.

Running, or the sensation of haste, brought skeletal things to the forefront of her mind. It exacerbated her fear of the water submerging her feet, and the chill that now gripped her bones. It was the impending knowledge of her desperation being futile that set her arms moving with a newfound rapidity, and her feet screaming into the face of the grass and mud. She sprinted the final few metres, and allowed the cobblestones to absorb the liquidised dirt from her feet.

Her breathing was hoarse, and devoid of the ability to converse with anyone. She knew her momentary pause would cost her, and those inside waiting for her final arrival, but the air granted her a sense of ardour that she hadn’t felt for days. It was a paradox - mental relief when those doors concealed the catalyst for her imminent decline once again.

With her legs now bent, and hands incapacitated in the cold, she contemplated straightening, but stopped. She felt the silent eyes of the cathedral upon her neck. It forced her to abandon her plans of remaining brittle in the cold, and to discard her capricious temperament.

The bricks seemed to command a neutral balance between the emotions, but she knew she was not capable of submitting herself fully to these wishes. It was as if the building itself absorbed the refreshing bite of the cold, and digested it until it became something dislocated and unrecognisable.

The building was unrecognisable. It made her realise that her attempt to run here was futile, and the landscape in her mind had failed to translate into reality.

She didn’t approve of it, but lifted her body up to face the doors. They were representative of the solemnity that she would discover upon her descent down the aisle. Its wood was flecked with marks, the forgotten scars that places of such religious reverence chose to present to the world.

She believed it to be egotistical, a sign of pride, but a building was not capable of such intentions.

The rain blessed her with its stimulating embrace. The wind allowed the roots of her hair to settle. She was fulfilled enough with her pilgrimage to the cathedral, and the settling of her breathing, so she went to push the wooden doors open, but realised they were already ajar.

Her fingers gripped the iron knocker, and pulled one of the doors towards her with a diminished sense of strength.

The smell from the door resembled decaying wood, and the digested cold evaporated into the musk she had been predicting moments before. She walked in, with trepidation, and released the iron from her chilled fingers.

It wasn’t the landscape she had pictured upon the hill, but one of melancholic reverie. She allowed it to linger in her mind as the doors closed.

The trees marked her exit as they fell to the floor with a ferocious twirl, their hues spun and intertwined with the melancholy tune of the sky.