OOC: Cut the bloody spam.
* * * * * * * * *
Unbelievably, at least to him, the pass had gotten colder the higher they had gone up.
The dirt trail had narrowed, and was gradually replaced by a rock terrace that was vaguely formed against the mountain; Kal could see the spaces in between the rocks he was walking on, and if he looked down, he got queasy, thinking how easily it looked like it might collapse. It was silly, really, considering that several ton wooly ramids had traipsed over the very same path, and they hadnt fallen once.
But the eeriness of it all was enough to frighten anyone. The dark spaces inside the rock were one thing, but the fact that if you rested for long enough, that you could hear water trickling along inside of them. The tribe was crossing streams that they couldnt even see, and crossing narrow, flimsy paths on the side of a ten thousand foot mountain, all the while finding it hard to breathe from the simple act of moving.
He was now taking the trail in bursts. He walked fifty feet, stopped, rested on a rock, got up, walked another fifty feet. He found that this method was working well for him, as he passed up other members of his tribe who were walking continuously, and he was using less water than them as well. Furthermore, it meant he got to rest every minute or two, which was beginning to seem essentially as they got higher.
They began to pass packed ice; on occasion he nearly slipped and fell, scolding himself for a foolish, clumsy teenagereven the ramids werent falling on this kind of ground.
His fingertips and toes began to grow numb, even though he didnt really feel cold; the rest of him was moving fast enough that he was sweating profusely. He flexed his fingers and toes whenever he rested, though, just to make sure that they wouldnt freeze to death on him.
He caught a glimpse or two of Miya down the path, but every time he saw her, he looked away, furious at himself. What did she know, anyway? She was just a foolish girl who he had once set his heart upon...
Angry again at himself, he resumed the long hike up the mountain.
The path was curving now, around the broad slope of the mountain, and his heart began to lighten. If the guides along the middle of the path had been right, when they rounded this bend, the pass would be in view, only a few hundred feet more up. Then his heart fell again, as he realized that a few hundred more feet up would take at least an hour with the pace that the tribe was moving at this pace.
He contented himself with his steady, short bursting walk, from locality to locality along the path, occasionally stopping to observe some of the things along the trailside, and always nearing the bend.
Forward a few dozen more feet, and Kal stopped, wiping his nose with the back of his sleeve. Snot had began to run the higher up he went, and it was starting to be a nuisance as his nose turned red, both from him rubbing it, and the cold chipping away at it ever so slowly. He paused before continuing forward. What was that noise? Like a far off rumble of thunder, but not ending at all...
His brow furrowing in concentration, Kal hurried forward now, only a hundred feet from the paths bend... only fifty feet... only ten now... he was looping around the bend...
And all in a moment, he forgot about Miya and the Fairhelts and the streams back home.
Before him lay a valley like no other he had seen before, a valley surely cut by the gods themselves. The mountains rose to either side of it, pines carpeting half their slopes before petering out. The bottom was densely forested and teeming with birds. Far off in the distance, he saw the thunderous giant he had heard before: a tremendous waterfall plunged down hundreds of feet, its booming call echoing across the valley. And next to its top, by the source of the little stream that would widen into the Great River, beside the little stream that had carved out this monument to the genius of the gods, beside it was the pass. The pass of hope. The pass of freedom.