The sun rose, pushing back the darkness to show us hiking upwards along a narrow ledge.
Cliffs on our right plunged to a rocky stream a hundred feet below us on our left.
Far above, sunlight flashed from the cable cars that would bring us home.
Between us and there lay a mountain.
~
Then the trail steepened.
Chains became our handrails.
Our path, became a near-vertical stack of stone stairs wedged into a chasm. They glistened under our toes with moss and rivulets of water.
The morning sun disappeared behind a crack of sky.
Ahead of us, a man in his twenties stopped at the landing to photograph the mountains and waterfalls.
Nearby, a girl bent to pet a feral cat.
She was pulled her hand back in pain.
She waved at us as we approached to show us her bloody finger.
“Do you have a bandage?”
We didn’t.
But the photographer did.
They started talking.
We kept climbing.
~
Hours later, we saw the two again, holding hands and ascending the mountain together.
I looked at Dani, and she offered me her hand.