"How possessing it still is," she thought.The peak aged from the last time she was there. The edges are not as defined as before like a canvass faded by the elements, years and sheer force it encountered. She wondered, aside from hers, how many stories of love started there? How many ended?
She set camp, lighting a single lamp. Unlike the first time she was there, now, at least for the next hour, she is alone. She welcomes that, needing to be buried in a deafening silence and a found seclusion.
She was hurting, not from the rigours of the climb, but from a loss. She had one of those rather exceptionally painful discoveries, where instead of something being found, something, everything was lost.
Her fragile trust has been violated by the person she thought least capable of doing so. How odd of her to return on the same spot her withering relationship blossomed, an ironic tribute to a failed promise.
For years, it was a grand symphony of bliss and tension, of primal tendencies and the serenity of familiarity. It was quite a potent dose to fan a flame of forever others can only envy of, that is, until, she became inadequate.
Someone shares her tchotchka amorta now. The space where she used to shine has now been occupied. The intimate prose she used to weave, those that crossed nights and days, have been manufactured, desecrated. Worst, she thought, she wasn't given an equal chance to stake her claim. Her tchotchka amorta was given and taken, not stolen.
Waiting for the rest of the group, she drank her tea and slipped into her blanket.
"At least," she muttered to herself, "this place is still just ours."She reached for her lamp but lost her balance, tumbling on to a bare surface of the white mountain. There, barely readable in a feeble glimmer, her tchotchka amorta's name etched beside another.
***
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