It had taken
over four hours, but Eliza had finally reached the summit of Mount Warning;
she’d left at 2am to be there in time to see the sunrise, and pulled herself up
the last hundred metres with the chains that were bolted into the rock face.
She knew she wouldn’t be disappointed and she was right. The view was more
breathtaking than she’d imagined, and for a moment, she forgot all about the
resentment she felt for Charlie, who’d told her she could never do it. It was
that anger that had fuelled her determination to work so hard.
Charlie had
never believed in her, he'd laughed when she said she wanted to be a
photographer, rolled his eyes when she said she wanted to make a book of mountain-top
sunrise photos and shook his head when she spent five-hundred dollars on a pair
of hiking boots. Well, she’d shown him alright.
She sat on the
precipice, camera in hand, boots resting by her thigh to allow her aching feet
to cool, wriggling her toes in the breeze, amazed that she was looking down at birds in flight. She reached
behind her for a drink of water. As she brought the water bottle to her mouth,
her arm knocked a boot and sent it falling into the bush below. Her body’s
reaction overtook all thought and she instinctively jerked forward to catch the
falling boot. She felt her heart jolt in the same way as it does when you lean
too far back on your chair, when your equilibrium tilts too far the wrong way.
Eliza’s arms
scrambled to find something to hold, some way of regaining that equilibrium.
She remembered something a friend has said the day before.
“It’s always
faster coming back down than going up.”
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