"Because it's there..." - Part 1 (Dreem-WoTW S2 R3)

The place where the world stopped was not so strange, but the vertigo was overwhelming. The girl could not decide whether or not it would be wise to jump.

For a moment she froze, gathering her thoughts - trying hard to convince her mind that she was still in control. She fought nausea as she teetered on the edge, staring 150ft through rolling bars into the precipitous cavern beneath her. Crevasses like this were commonplace here. She had yearned to experience life from a new perspective; had planned her journey well, but somehow, being here right now made the experience almost too real. The IceFall was a harsh environment. She could feel her palms, sweaty and claustrophobic beneath the thick lining of her gloves. Her heart rate elevated; she triple-checked her carabiners - still locked into the ropes. Her shoulders dropped slightly but the mountains continued to spin slowly around her. Determined to prevail, she shut her eyes and took a deep breath.

It wasn't particularly wide, the gap that is - a little over twenty-five feet. It did mean that several ladders had been lashed together to span the divide. This made the traverse shaky at best. Embarking on the crossing, the risks had been high. She had lined up the crampons on her right foot with the rungs of the ladder beneath her, front and back, and once her boot was in place, lifted the left. Rinse and repeat. She had eased herself forward, one step at a time. It should have been easy. And it was... until it wasn't anymore.

Three-quarters of the way across, the glacier shifted suddenly, the ladder jerking beneath her feet. She lurched forward... her back crampon preventing her from falling flat on her face, but the false sense of security was short-lived; the loss of control immediate. And just like that, the stakes were raised. She had no time to think. Unable to correct her balance, she realised that the house was all in, and she had no option but to follow suit. Do or die.

Now, Sarah! Choose!!!

The voice inside her head screamed.

A half-prayer barely escaped her lips as she looked skyward. As the ladder twisted, she jumped, holding tightly to the safety lines. The nylon should have held, but the late May sunshine was unforgiving, and the ice screws securing the ropes to the upper walls slid easily from the glistening ice face. The anchors of her life unhinged as she fell into the vast emptiness of the abyss.

Her concept of time disturbed, she stirred, blinking into the blinding light; the bright glare bouncing off the curvature of the aluminium ladder, lying a few feet away. She could just make out the opening to the outside world, where the light was still visible; a halo around the edges of its sharp contours. It was certainly a change of perspective, lying prone and seeing the world from this angle.

She hugged herself tightly; alone, shivering, numb. She moved her gloved fingers gingerly across her face, touching her hand to the side of her head where the strap of her goggles should have been, then, wincing, drew it back quickly, wet and sticky. And heaved. Feeling empty, she traced her fingers across her face, picking at the salty ice, forming frozen streams across raw cheekbones.

In those few moments, she contemplated her presence on the mountain and her reasons for being there. She concluded, like Mallory, that she chose to experience the struggle, in all its grandeur, simply

Because it was there...

And as the simple complexity of that thought dissipated, so did her salty stream of consciousness.

This post is part 1 of a 2-part collaborative short story fiction. Part 2 has been written by @snook

You can find out more about the dreem-wotw S2 R3 collaborative writing contest here.

Compulsory prompts start each part of the story. The writer of part 2 was only permitted to start their piece once part 1 was published. Neither writer was privy to the second prompt until part 1 had been published. In the case of this story, each writer worked on their piece entirely separately from the other.

Special thanks to @snook who kindly stepped in and offered to write part 2 for me and did a magnificent job in the process 💗

Header image by PLBernier on Canva Pro

"Because it's there." - Title is taken from the famous George Mallory quote, as he prepared to climb Everest in 1924, when he was asked why he wanted to do it. He never made it to the summit, and his remains were found seventy-five years later, at an elevation of around 8000 metres.

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