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.