The road coiled, serpentine and slow, up the ancient spine of Equinox Mountain. Each turn was tight with the inevitability of age—of time and erosion, of cold winters breaking stone. The tires gripped the asphalt like hands clinging to a ledge, the engine growling, low and steady, as if murmuring to itself.
Amelia sat beside me, her gaze fixed ahead, though her thoughts were somewhere else, tangled perhaps in the heavy branches of the trees that pressed in on either side, closing us in. The forest seemed endless, a tunnel of green and shadow, the leaves whispering secrets to each other as we passed—a language we could not hope to understand.
There were moments when the trees broke, and the world opened up in sudden, terrifying vistas—drops sheer and unforgiving, the valley yawning beneath us, a void that made you clutch at the wheel, made you question the strength of the guardrails that separated life from oblivion. In these moments, the light felt sharp, too clear, slicing through the air with a kind of violence that left us both squinting, as if looking directly at the truth of something we were not meant to see.
But then the trees would close in again, the light softened by leaves, and we could pretend, for a little while longer, that there was no truth at all—just the road, winding up and up, towards a summit that might not exist.
There was a kind of inevitability to it all—a slow, crawling dread that built with each passing mile, a sensation that we were not driving up this mountain but being drawn to its peak by some unseen force. The mountain called to us, and we answered, not with words but with the turn of the wheel, the press of the accelerator, the quiet, unspoken agreement that we would keep going, no matter what.
And then, as if the mountain had tired of toying with us, the road leveled out, the trees parted, and we were there—at the top, or as close to the top as the road would allow. The air was thinner here, cooler, as if it, too, had made the climb and was now catching its breath. We stepped out of the car, the silence overwhelming, a silence that held within it all the weight of the climb, all the unasked questions, all the fears that had no name.
The view was expansive, stretching out in all directions—a panorama of green and blue and the distant haze of towns and rivers and other roads, other lives. It was beautiful, undeniably so, but it was also something else—something that made you feel small, insignificant, like a speck of dust on the wind, easily lost and forgotten.
Amelia stood beside me, her hand slipping into mine, the warmth of her skin grounding me in a way that nothing else could. We stood there for a long time, neither of us speaking, both of us knowing that words were unnecessary—that whatever we had come here to find, we had found it, or perhaps it had found us.
And after awhile, having soaked in the views, we turned and began the journey back down — down the winding road, down through the trees and the shadows, back to the world below. But something had changed, something subtle, a shift in the air, in the light, in us. The mountain had taken something from us, or perhaps it had given us something, though it was impossible to say which.
August 14, 2024
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