I was 8 years old.

The attic in my grandmother's creaky old house was the playground for my imagination then, and the tiny wooden door I discovered one day there was one of the few things I didn't have to dream up. Behind a piece of unidentifyable dusty wooden furniture, moved aside to build a fort or a castle or the Great Wall of China, was a small, irregularly shaped door. It was 3 feet high on the higher side, while the other looked like the corner was cut off of it, making it almost triangular. There was no lock, nothing to keep my curiousity out, just a tiny metal handle, like you might find on a kitchen drawer.

It took several afternoons of hiding in the attic one winter before I could muster the courage to try the door. I pulled on the tiny handle with my equally tiny hands, even throwing my full weight (probably equal to that of a sack of potatoes then) against it. It didn't budge. I sat down, dejectedly, with my back leaning against the door, looking at the dirty piece of blue carpet that covered the vent up from downstairs. I sighed, and let my head fall back, and a half heartbeat later was looking at the ceiling of a whole new world.

I pulled my cloak, well, an old blanket really, closer under my chin as the near arctic breeze escaped the space beyond the door. I caught up my copper-pot helmet, and my baseball bat sword, and dug my toes into my grandfather's slippers, and ventured into the unknown.

It was an arctic pass, through two towering mountains. As I braved the chilly weather, I noticed a cave to my left. I fell to my knees and crawled inside my newfound shelter. I curled up against the rock wall, safe from the winds, and closed my eyes. The howling outside made it sound like music fled above me across the mountain peaks, and I dozed and dreamed, wrapped in my blanket cloak, my toes warm in the old leather slippers.

This was a Nodeshell Challenge!

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