Endurance

A door stand ajar on the glacier. Alone, sentry amid the wind blown ice cold of the world.
The lone survivor of Shackleton's misadventure crawls towards it. Behind him between the ice hills distant mists hold broken masts of The Endurance towering crookedly in grey skies where crackling ice imprisoned the ship many months before.
The last of his desire to live is ebbing away. He is delirious now with thirst and fear and hunger. He followed the shadows of dreams which fell into darkness to this place of fretful rapture, this isolated door on the ice flow.
A door standing alone on a glacier, he squints through frozen eyelashes, ice burnt eyelids, can it be real? Am I alone? he wonders his swollen lips silently mumbling the words while his aching eyes search for an occupant, for a dwelling for the door to belong to, but there is no-one.
He lurches up driven forward always forward a tiny flickering of a desire - to live, to be with someone, to survive - this is alive in his blood if in no other part of his frozen body. 'Knock and the door will be opened' his deliria suggests and knock he does though his feeble pat makes no sound.
"Hello?" The tremor of his voice is a stranger to him and he tries again hopeful he may yet recognise the voice of the man calling.
"Hello?" The door creaks and opens a little more so a golden chink of light falls on the ice at his feet. He reaches for it as though it were a gift but suddenly realises it is only light not real, not as real as the harsh bolt of wind cutting through him.
"Open." He demands of the door and leaning against it breaks a glass panel. He reaches through the open pane into the otherworld of the beyond, inside and his arm disappears. He withdraws his hand quickly, one can not afford to lose something as precious as an arm in such a place.
"Open damn you." He pushes vainly against the door and hears movement within.
"Hello? Can I come in?" He calls desperately.
"Of course." Comes a reply from the other side and spurred into action he turns the wooden handle but the door does not move.'He says yes but he does not mean it' mocks his deliria. He falls weeping to his knees, then tumbles weakly to the ice looking upwards to the sky, tears freezing on his eyes locking him inside the vision of scurrying glacial clouds racing to be somewhere else.
A flower hangs above his head. A gilly flower and the scent of it fills his senses. He reaches his snow caked arm and grasps the flower with grey stiff fingers forcing the petals open before they are ready. The door beside him swings freely open and he is bathed in a golden shaft. A shape stand above him.
"Captain?"