I will never let being afraid stop me. Never.
I threw myself up on rocks, slipped on a few. Pulled until my arms hurt, kept going through the top--until I reached the trail, drowning in sweat, shivering from the tightness of limbs, smiling like a crazy woman.
Felt like Ezio Auditore.
I ran and climbed everywhere, everywhere on that trail today. It was fucking beautiful.
Then we went to Parfrey's Glen.
The trail was nearly destroyed by flooding, and my group was tired (even though more than half of them had taken stairs). That didn't stop me, the wild one. Channeling the stream that sang through the silence, getting into my blood like an antidote for sanity, I ran and ran and ran. I leapt over rocks, threw myself into the water, clung to the cliffs that bore faces. I was a heathen, sun-drunk, feeling like a human and loving it. I lost sight of my companions, but kept on, faster, faster, passing two, three groups who'd come before us....
Faster. Faster. More channeling. I'm running now, well off the remainder of the beaten trails, climbing the rocks that were noticeably larger than I was, laughing, murmuring old phrases to the stream that sparkled like liquid glass. When I reached the end, I was actually confused. I didn't remember the trail being so short...
There's a couple there, normal-sized and sparkling like giants in my native lands. I smile like a wild child and they grin back. The woman has a long walking stick, sweat on her neck, a braid wrapped in a bronze holding thing. The man has a beard and a cut-off pair of dress pants--yes, dress pants. They raise their eyebrows--
Okay, that was pretty justified, since I started rolling around in the water. I'd made it! Well, well before the other people. I couldn't even hear them calling after me anymore. I'd made it and channeling had made me so happy I could be sick and--oh, oh. Not deep enough to swim but deep enough to flay my limbs and breathe.
And then I stood. "I lost my group," I said, my blushing lips drawn with water drops, shaking my somehow-still-braided hair. "I lost them all the way, I lost them!" The slightest creep of an Irish accent is on the edge of my sentences, like it always does when I'm tremendously happy. The woman grins at me like we're sharing a secret, and my heart is beating too rapidly to offer her kindness.
She said, "Hide! We'll tell them we haven't seen you."
The man grins, pats her on the back, gives me a wee salute--and I'm off, two seconds, literally running up the cliff face, throwing myself up the limbs of stone that are higher than canyon, stone, and sky, higher than my hopes for the future, higher than the heart that had climbed into my throat.
I stare down at the world and wait for them--my group--watching the couple gallivant to my illusion. And then I sing. Quietly. Half to myself.
My skin was the touch of the moon on the water
my hair's still the light of the high summer sun.
My eyes are the blue of your breath in winter--
you've known all along, this is where you belong.
I can imagine my words forming callouses on the stone, etching themselves into time. Maybe they'll survive when the rest of us are gone, maybe they'll hang like ghosts to cool the tourists from the hot-sun.....
I'm drunk on the climbing.
The rest of my group rounds the bend, looking quite concerned--and by that I mean, Finley and Schiffy. My faithful assistant assassins. Chippered from running, in an attempt to keep up--but I knew the lands better'n they did. They didn't stand a chance. Ben next. I feel them talking, feel their too-quiet words pass over my flesh--and I whistle the hunger games' Whistle. See Finley's head snap left and right and finally up, say something to the other two--and they all just stand there.
They stare in shock. How had I gotten up there so fast, so high? How had I? How had I?
I wave. They wave back--and they climb up after me, to my surprise. A rather interested Schiffy is first, then a panting-like-a-dog Finley, and a grinning-like-he-has-a-secret Ben.
I want to keep going--literally, I want to scour the waterfall--but Amanda trips when I keep on when they finally catch up (Riley, Amanda, Megan). We go home.
I run the trail back. I sprint. Past the couple who greets me a second time as I explain in a rush I must keep my lead, past the stone faces that are waiting to gobble me down. Past the sky and sun and stars and clouds and everything, past the need to breathe the not-enough air in my tired lungs, past the soreness in my limbs--
I run, I run, I run, and run, run, run again. I don't stop. The stream song wallows under my veins like a promise.
Home.
Run. Run. Run.
Suddenly, I stop, realizing I've reached the halfway mark and there's no one here.
Finley, two minutes later, comes out of the trees at a full sprint, pulls me into his arms, and kisses me, pulling on my braids. The clear-as-glass blue slips from my eyes as I push him into the stream.
fuck.
He said, "too much, huh?"
I said nothing, I stared. I said, "I want to run. Wait for them?"
And ran. But he ran after me, calling me, apologizing to me for kissing me (despite the whole 'broken-up' thing).....His eyes were on top of me like he wanted the making of me, right then. Finley loves me, I remember, I realize--for I'd forgotten. I'd made myself forget, because the temptation is still there; though my stream won't let me voice it.
I run faster, veering onto a secret sidepath and throwing my head to the stream to drink. It's dirty and it probably has dead mosquito eggs and cold and I don't care. I throw my head back and howl, I lose one of the braids from my hair.
Perfect.
Now I'm at Ben's, and they still stare at me like I'm holding a secret. What they don't know is that I've no secrets left to give them, none that they've earned. My secret isn't so complicated.
It's called......
Wild.
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