The rock face rose before her, ever upwards and with nary a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Hands aching, toes cramping, she clung to the sheer slab of granite like a lizard with its many toes splayed across, searching for an imperfection to hold onto. ‘How stupid could I be,’ she said aloud to herself, as nobody else was nearby to hear her. She reached a hand out, transferring her weight to the toes of her right foot as she did so and felt along the wall for the tiny crevice which she thought she had seen.

There, only an arm’s length away, was the imperfection her fingers sought. They engaged on the tiny hump of warm stone and she turned her body imperceptibly toward the new handhold and began the process of shifting her left foot to gain a higher position. She thought ‘how long have I been out here climbing this God-forsaken rock,’ as she made several more moves and gained half a dozen feet in elevation. Hours seemed to have passed, certainly one hour, as she had started before dawn and the sun was now fully above the horizon, but aside from that, she had no means of telling the passage of time. Her lazer focus prevented her looking up toward the sun to determine its position lest she then fall to her certain death. Abigail was accustomed to climbing, probably better than anyone in Zion, but she had always merely had fun on the smaller cliffs nearby which had been mapped out for decades as to the routes to take upward.

Her waning strength told her that she had been on the rock for longer than she had climbed before, and was higher than she had ever been before. She thought now of the comforts of home and hot food which would await her should she reach the summit where her friends had planned to meet her. ‘Those bastards,’ she muttered as she shifted a foot, had planned to race around the long way on foot. Her strength renewed somewhat as she focused her anger toward them and to beating them there.

Her foot slipped and she fumbled for a precarious second to regain her composure and focus on the task at hand. She remained steady and unmoving for a moment to clear her mind before resuming the methodical slow movement and grasping fingers required of climbing. From the bottom, she had studied the rock with a spyglass, trying to hunt for the imperfections which she now sought largely without sight. Mapping a climb beforehand was tricky when there were no earlier passage of climbers to figure it out. These moves were original and improvised. Nobody had been here for perhaps half a millennia or more when they had lived with excess and unneeded comforts.

The stories were still told of the humans before. They had had enough that they could afford to waste precious supplies and materials in the pursuit of fun alone. Abigail often wondered what life had been like then, as humanity was only now rediscovering prosperity. Even she, as young as she was, remembered the harsh life prior to the Great War which led to the peace and prosperity they now enjoyed. Before there had been peace treaties and security agreements between the states which surrounded them, people lived in fear of subjugation from one source or another. Twice in her young life had Zion been invaded and she and her family wondered when their next meal would come.

She was ever thankful for the prosperity brought about by the end of the Great War and was now thinking about how idiotic it was that she might now be throwing her life away so soon after she experienced true freedom. A hand moved, a foot moved. Steadily but slowly, she continued her ascent.

As the edge of the summit got closer, she felt the weight lift from her flaming shoulders and burning feet. The end was in sight and she felt for the first time that she might actually survive this ordeal. More than that, she did not see any heads poking over the rim, so she would have her friends beat.

Finally, she reached a grasping hand over the rim of the rock and felt scrub grass under her fingers. She applied all her strength to that arm and rose slowly out of the nothingness below her. The dust under her hand shifted and she began to slip backwards. Panic set in instantly as she realized that she had let go of all holds and was about to fall a thousand feet to her death.

Suddenly, a pressure appeared on the back of her hand, pinning it to the sand and halting her slipping. She swung the other hand up and gained purchase above. The same weight was applied to this hand and she muscled herself onto the flat, sandy rock before collapsing a few safe feet away from the edge.

Abigail sat up after a few heavy breaths steadied her heartbeat. In the expanse below her, the city of Zion stretched out among the sea of green pine trees. She’d been up here before, but had never fully enjoyed the beauty of the landscape laid out before her.

‘Hey look who showed up early to the party,’ said a familiar voice behind her. She turned to look at the speaker as her friends came out from the woods carrying their packs filled with goodies. Confused, Abigail turned her head around and scanned the entire area for her savior, but her eyes lit on not a single soul except those who were just now coming toward her. She shook her head and stood to meet her friends, saying not a word about her apparently ethereal guardian as they picnicked here, high above the city.