The Ancients: The Mountains

My room let out onto a corridor dark with the light of a setting sun. Its walls were made out of glass; thick, green, and mottled. When I first saw it, I had stared in amazement and walked forward as if in a trance until my hand –hot with fever- made contact. The feel of its icy surface, hard and liquid at once, had brought my addled mind into focus and I had pressed my entire body against the substance- dragged my hands down the length of it as I let myself fall to the ground. Bathing in the strange, nebulous light, and the cold waves rippling off the surface of the glass, my senses had ached with joy.
It had been before mid-day and the glass had shone soft and luminous with light that swept through the corridor like a river threatening to overflow its banks. I still remembered the faint apparition of myself in the glass, face flattened into a severe oval and outlined by hair black as night. My eyes had reflected crystalline blue in the glass, stark against the blinding whiteness of the light.
That was two days ago. I felt pretty sure of that, because I had spent all of my waking hours since then holding onto lucidity, counting the hours, and willing the delirium- and the fever that brought it- out of my body. Today's light was of a quality completely different from the cleansing light of two days before. I looked past the glass and noted that the sun had left behind its zenith and was curving steadily downward, falling quickly toward the ancient and crumbling mountain peaks below. Now shadows pooled in the long seams of the corridor and seeped along the glass floor. What little light fell through the glass floated where it could, weak, green, and dying.
Quelling the damp chill that crept along my spine, I walked into the corridor and turned left, my slippered feet swirling through the shadows. Few bedrooms opened onto my corridor but the few that did were all empty, for it was the hour of the dying and their occupants must therefore be gathered in a distant building, hunched over and speaking in low, hurried breaths, joined together in the unity that their religion brought them.
Was it truly two days, I wondered. Or has it been five? Ten? I leaned against the wall on my left, and pressed my forehead to it. My head ached, and the effort of walking had increased the pain. I reached up and settled my fingers gingerly on the bandage that circled my head. I was pretty sure that I had figured correctly, had stayed coherent enough since my awakening to string time together correctly.
I had woken up in a dark room and tried to move, only to realize that my limbs were heavy and weak, and my head thick with fever. I had forced my feet off the bed and onto the floor, my body after it, and walked unsteadily, legs trembling with weakness, across the featureless expanse of floor toward the door. I didn't see the girl, sleeping heavily in the deep shadows of an alcove, until I was already beside her. I kept walking and passed her by without hesitation, feverish and intent on reaching the door. The door turned out to be a curtain of heavy fabric that I pushed aside only with great effort. The glassy corridor wall, and the comfort of its illuminating brightness, had greeted me.