OCR Text |
Show 34 lean over the edge, maybe take off my shoes and touch my feet to the water if I felt daring enough. Local legend said that once a man had been coming down the mountain on his horse when the horse lost balance around the comer and they both went over the edge. I thought about what that fall must have been like every time I was up there. It was terrible to think about that man and his horse falling, and I wondered if it was better to fall with or without a horse. Probably worse due to the guilt and the terror in the horse's eye in my opinion. In a way it was comforting to stand and feel as though I could drift, thoughts, memory and weight, over the edge and down the waterfall, floating through the river all the way down to the valley below. I could see the stars and city better up there, without any branches blocking the way. Stars seemed to blur into city and vice versa at certain points, and sometimes looked like different constellations in the same sky. There was mystical light floating in the darkness beneath me, too, the splash where the waterfall hit the river and rocks, and that mist was just as uncountable as the stars in the sky. Alan stared at the embers of the fire until Chris and Brad emerged from their caves, I climbed down from the top of the waterfall, and Steve stopped thinking about walking into the waterfall. Steve finally asked, "So, Alan, what's it like being back?" In my eyes, Steve was the only one of us who still might go on a mission. |