Like a Mountain, Waiting

Royalty Notice: 20% will be donated to an LGBT organization in my community.***I was given a prophecy by the Oracle at Delphi, long before the birth of your Christ-child. She said I would be a soldier, and that I could not die until four things had happened. The first was finding "e;a mountain to the west."e; Do you have any idea how many mountains there are to the west of Delphi?I do.As the years and centuries passed, I searched, and fought, and searched again. Not knowing how I would know which mountain was the right mountain, but somehow certain I would know.I exhausted Europe. The British Isles. Iceland, Greenland, eastern Canada. Down into America around the time she was born, and there I found...my mountain. I made it my home. I left only when I was called to battle, for my new country, for others. I survived, of course. Came back to wait for the next call. Wondered, too, as I fought, and lived, and waited...when the second, and third, and fourth would happen. Wondered, too, sometimes, when the millennia made a world's weight on shaking Atlas shoulders, if the right word was actually "e;if."e;And then I met him. July 12, 1912. I was so very sure....This is my story, and the story of my kin in the village-town, and in the homes and farms grain-scattered around my mountain, though not blood kin, for I never married. How could I? My story, told by the man whose life was intertwined so closely with mine for a time.Nikolai***10,737 words of actual story text