“I will be able to feel your lush body every step of the way. You are my heart, and I would never let anything happen to you.” He smiled at me and I was glad I chose to learn and not be carried. This was a man who would cherish me, just as I was, even if I was afraid. However, I knew then that he’d respect courage more.
We ate in a comfortable silence, both contemplating the various aspects of the remaining journey. There are many things I’d done in the last day that I wouldn’t have done for anyone but my alma xemelga. Without fully understanding it myself, I now realized that I’d been searching for a love to transcend time my entire life. There had to be a way for us to stay together. It wasn’t fair that I’d find him, only to have to let him go.
I cleaned up while he went out to assess the mountain. He’d be starting our first few handholds so I could get the gist of it before we were too far off the ground. I tried not to think about it, I was already nervous. My pack was ready and resting in the cave’s entrance. His open pack was already outside.
His pack was filled with rope, shoes, and gloves for both of us. I put my shoes on while he finished setting up the handholds. I pulled the rope and harnesses out of his pack and laid them out. I put my pack in his now empty one and waited for him to show me how to do this.
“We have enough light to make it to the castle by sunset, even if we go very slowly. Are you ready?” He looked excited. I wished I could share his enthusiasm, but I was just trying to keep our small meal in my churning stomach.
“Sure,” I said, silently praising myself for not sounding as scared as I felt. I kissed him, deeply. “I love you.”
“What was that for? Not that you ever have to have a reason to kiss me,” he said as he smiled, with his arms wrapped around my waist.
“Just in case.” I leaned into him, feeling his laughter rumbling deep in his chest.
“We will be fine, amada. I love you as well. Come.” He led me to where I had put the gear, and demonstrated how to put the harness on.
I stepped into the leg holes of my rope harness and he drew it slowly up my legs. His hands barely held the rope as he slid them up the backs of my thighs, caressing the way to my butt. The heated look in his eyes made me forget momentarily what we were supposed to be doing, my heart pounded for another reason entirely. While I appreciated the distraction, I placed my hands on his, holding him still.
“You’re incredibly distracting, but I really need to focus on what we’re doing. This is terrifying to me, and doing that is just delaying the inevitable,” I smiled.
He returned my smile, and obligingly began to explain that the shoes were helpful to grip the walls due to the orichalcum studs on the toes and bottom of the soles. He showed me how to release the handholds and jam them into the mountainside for maximum grip ability. He explained that the things I would know as called pitons were called esracador here. They were slightly different in structure than ours, though. They were created with orichalcum and embedded themselves into the crevices of the mountain, making themselves part of the mountain’s structure, thereby creating a stronger, more stable hold. They worked by pressing the pointy end into the mountain and turning the handle one way. You turned the handle the other way to release the esracador in order to place it again.
He placed the esracador and climbed a few, to show me how to maneuver properly. I was very impressed with his skill, and debated again about the perks of being on his back while he climbed. He was graceful and skilled, shimmying up and down the mountainside like a lizard.
He had me use a few of the esracador to climb up, and I found that it wasn’t that difficult. It took a surprising amount of concentration to place and remove them, and I didn’t realize that I’d gone so far up until he told me to wait. It was actually sort of fun. I hung like a monkey on the side of the mountain and waited while he scurried back down to secure his pack to his body. I felt a little guilty that he was carrying both packs, but the guilt was quickly put to rest as I saw him clambering back up the mountain, gathering esracador on his way up like he was pulling taffy out of the wall.
He climbed up the side of the mountain to meet me with the speed and grace of a mountain lion, causing my mouth to both water and dry up at the same time. The esracador were clipped to his harness clinking together excitedly as he climbed. Once he reached me where I was clinging to the mountainside, he gave me a quick kiss before securing us together with a rope about three feet long. I appreciated the caution. He handed me half of the esracador so we could climb side-by-side. My reach was smaller than his, but we adjusted into an easy rhythm.
