Ravine

Ravine
 
    She sees the pinnacle of the ridge loom ahead, still some yards off into the distance, up the barely-visible trail snaking up the steep slope to the pinprick of space peering at her through the dense treeline, and at this sight she cinches her backpack tighter, drawing the straps as hard as she can stand, putting one muddied boot before the other. Her legs begin to burn slightly but she hasn't been able to feel them very much for the past 12 hours, so they go unnoticed. Up the slope, one foot, one foot, step by step. Bit by bit. Sweat drop by sweat drop.

    Until she reaches the top of the ridge. There, standing in the gap in the trees, she looks out, and her heart leaps in her throat and she gasps, and takes a step back.

    Before her is a gaping ravine, the bottom of which spirals away into the darkness; across the smirking lips of the scarred gash on the earth's surface she can see lights, but they are impossibly far away. The closest thing now is the edge, barely 10 feet before her. An edge. Past it...eternal oblivion.

    She looks down. And takes a step back.

***

    Earlier that morning she woke up and ate breakfast before packing up camp and hitting the trail, knowing that she was at the beginning of a long and painful journey. Why was she out here in the wilderness instead of back home, safe and sound and secure in her bed? She doesn't know now, but at one point she thought she did. She grew tired of being complacent, of being there in one place at one moment in time. And she wanted something...felt something calling her, maybe...

    It all started that night. That night, she met someone. A stranger in the immigration office in which she worked, a dark-skinned man standing aloof from the other immigrants. He was Mexican, of course; she and her co-workers were the only whites there, and that's usually how it was. When he walked in the hot, arid breath of the New Mexico desert wafted in and followed him like sheep follow the shepherd and danced about his feet, and she immediately sought his eyes, but they were obscured. A hat pulled down low blocked his face in a dark shadow, even as he approached her and stood not even a foot before her wide eyes.

    "Senorita."
    "Si?"
    "Yo se que tu quieres."
   
***

    The woman wipes her forehead with a blue bandana and ties it back around her head before taking a pull of water. The ravine still unnerves her, still rattles her. She shakes slightly; a drop of water trickles down her shirt, but she pays no heed. Her eyes are on the ravine. And what lies across it.

***
    She sat upright, every hair on her body on edge. Who was this man? Where did he get the notion that he could approach her in such a way? Who, where, how. Why?
   
    "C-cual es tu nombre, senor?"
    "No es importante. Yo se que tu quieres."
    That statement again. She swallowed.
    "I.....I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What do I want?"
    He leaned in, peered at her.
    "Tu quieres amor. You want love."

***
    So she left, went to the wild, untamed hills of New Mexico, got lost in the wilderness, although not literally; the map the man had given her was sufficient to keep her on the right track. But she lost herself, which was the point. She was out there to find herself. To find what makes her happy. To finally get a piece of that which so alluded her.
   
    She knew what she wanted when she left.

***

    But she doesn't want to go after it.

    The lights across the ravine twinkle at her, little globes of dancing joy, the only things of beauty in a night quickly growing hideous. Above her the crimson moon grins, a blood-thirsty visage showering the ground with ill-begotten light, making what would normally be a picturesque setting something to be feared and loathed. It doesn't help matters that a few drops of rain fall on her skin and splatter across her map, doesn't help matters at all. The impending rain and the stormclouds gathering, black with fury, make her shiver and a seed of doubt becomes planted in her heart. Soon it grows into a tree and branches out into every part of her. It becomes one with her.

    She shakes her head and stares again at the ravine, with great reluctance.

    Across the ravine there is a place, a paraiso, a place where she will meet that which she wants. A place where something awaits her...Something waits for her, and this something will make her happy. She knows this. Or at least she believes it. It is what the man told her at the office that day. Why she believes it, she does not know. Sometimes the heart can be a perplexing place.What she does know is that to get there, to obtain that...unidentifiable destiny she longs to grasp, she must cross over and take it.

    She must cross the ravine. But does she want to? Can she? Can she go through with it? The ravine is deep, frighteningly-so, with a growling mist at the bottom, obscuring what the map shows as a river. In New Mexico rivers are not tame. In this country, El Rio is the end, the omega, the termination. You cross at your own peril, and sometimes you find that it is better to not have crossed at all, because once you defeat the river, once you are on the other side in safety, the river will not allow you to return. Ever. This, along with the sheer monstrosity of the situation before her, makes her quiver in her boots and shake with the touch of someone facing certain death.

    Decisions.

    Without really meaning to, without having any intention or whim to do so, she slides down on the ground and passes into something that could resemble sleep, but isn't.

***

    She pants and tries to catch her breath. Two hours after leaving the rim of the ravine and descending into Dante's darkness she finds herself on a ledge, pressed tightly against the rough sandstone wall, fighting hard not to look down. Her boots are pressed against the rock; her heaving chest is flattened against the sheer face of the cliff. And her eyes...When they are open, they look everywhere, up, left, right...and down. The trail had looked promising, but looks can be deceiving. Instead of an easy climb to the top, she finds herself stuck, a mere speck against the towering escarpment. And she begins to be more afraid than she ever was above the rim. After crossing the river on a old, rickety "bridge" that quickly sank under her weight, she climbed up, up, up, towards the rim and her desire. But  fear has her firmly in its grasp.
   
      Her right hand trembles slightly as she spies a tiny crevice about a foot over to her right, her fingers flexing but not really wanting to let go. If she can place her hand there, and then slide her foot to the right onto that little nub of rock, she can shift her weight to her right side and then climb up the rock face to the ledge 7 feet above. Then from there she can...

    She is getting ahead of herself. First things first. The crevice.

    Her right hand shakes violently at the strain and as her left hand digs in for extra support she grits her teeth and steadily removes her fingers-

    -and slips and slides and thrusts her right hand over, pawing at the crevice, fingernails scraping against rock. Her left arm screams out in pain. Her right leg buckles. Her eyes go wide, watching her fingers struggle. The crevice is there, right there. Go to it. Go! Get in the crevice, slide in, grab it -no no no no! Again! She swings to her left side, away from the crevice, placing a tremendous amount of pressure on her left hand, and she can almost hear the bones in her fingers begin to crack. A cry escapes her lips as she cantilevers herself over again. Another desperate attempt. Another pawing.

    Her right hand misses.

    And with a scream her left hand gives away, two fingers shattering, and with no support she slumps backwards.

    She falls.

    Down, down, down, her body flipping and spinning out of control, her shrieks being consumed by the gaping hole in which she plummets, darkness covering her and the mist enveloping her form and hugging her fiercely in a murderer's embrace and she loses all sense of time and space and motion, knowing only that she cannot stop, that she has lost control and is in so much pain and -

    -the air is jerked from her body in a forceful slap across the flat of her back as the bitterly-cold water stabs like a thousand knives into her skin.

    She has no time to come up for air before the current viciously cracks her against a boulder and whiplashes her body like a ragdoll into the next set of rapids, taking her downstream faster than a horse's gallop. Her lungs are on fire, the oxygen gone, replaced by carbon dioxide fighting to escape through her mouth, which comes open in agony as her head slams into a sunken log. Water floods in and rushes down her throat. She cries out and gags. A hand reaches feebly out into the air above the churning surface but grabs nothing, nothing but molecules of desperately-needed oxygen. Nothing.

    Another rapid, another bone-crushing blow against unseen destroyers.

    And with that, the water pervades her lungs and her stomach and her intestines and her eyes fly open in one last attempt at seeing salvation but they see nothing but red as the vessels in her retina explode.
   
    She cries out for daddy but daddy can't save her.

***

    The woman screams and awakens with a start and flies to her feet, heart pounding in her chest. Her hands fly up to her face and then her throat and her heart and then to each other as the tears began to flow down her cheeks, sobs coming forth from her in huge gasps, and every bit of her trembles at the horrific sights and sounds still playing in her mind.

    She shakes her head and crashes down on a nearby log, trying desperately to halt the trauma but failing. All the while the ravine smiles and she looks over for a brief second and almost loses all control. Arms wrapped around her, she rocks to herself, mumbling incoherently, letting her emotions carry her away, and she cries into the night.

    Cries herself to sleep.

***

    She finally reaches the place, slumps down. Her legs are exhausted, her bones weary, every muscle in her body cramped and screaming. Directly ahead are two lights, two shining beacons belonging to what is now revealed to be a Jeep staring at her, and she sighs in relief before letting her head droop in exhaustion.

    "Esto es Paraiso...Estoy aqui." This is all that can escape her parched lips. This is Paraiso. I am here. But for now, it does not matter, for a Jeep in the middle of the desert is not paradise to her. She wanted something...She wanted what she desired, and she crossed the ravine and death and mortality to get it, but what, what has she earned?

    Just then the headlights become briefly obscured by the silhouette of a man standing before her, reaching down, taking her gently by the arms and lifting her up on her feet, his eyes staring intently into hers, trying to peer past their fatigued exteriors and into her soul.

    She feebly blinks and opens her eyes and sees a face, a human face, the face of a man. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out, nothing but a gasp, and her right hand reaches up and touches his chin and his cheek and his hair to verify if this is in fact real, if this is in fact happening.

    If this is actually true.

    After the horrors her heart faced on the journey, she cannot believe that she is finally at the place that she so longed for. But she is. And so is he.

    His eyes gaze into hers and go liquid and her body yields to his embrace.

    "I've been waiting for you."
    She swallows. "I...I'm here. I'm...here."
    "Is this where you want to be?'

    She takes a moment to answer the question, to look around, to see him. Her hands touch his face and his lips and run through his hair and tremble as they feel the rough fabric of his shirt, and she can feel his hands hold her, can feel his cool breath on her face, and suddenly, without really knowing why, she realizes that she is indeed where she wants to be. This is what she desires. This is what she wants.

    This is what she truly, truly wants, and she has it. And nothing can make her any happier.

    "Yes," she exhales as she leans in, eyes slowly closing, lips hovering before his. "Estamos aqui."

    Their lips grow close and-

***
   
    A clap of thunder rips the earth to pieces and slams with great force against her eardrums, causing her to leap to her feet, heart hammering. The tears have stopped flowing, but only because she can cry no longer. And because the horrors of the nightmare have been replaced by the sweet, exhilarating sights and sounds of a new dream, a fresh, vigorous awakening, something that makes her skin grow flush and her fingers tingle. She smiles as she basks in the residual warmth of the dream's embrace, not minding the rain now falling in torrents, nor the temperature dropping by the second. No; she is absorbed in all the rapture of love, and with that, she walks towards the edge of the ravine, towards those dots of light and her destiny.

    She takes a step...

    -water gurgling, filling her lungs, vessels popping, excrutiating agony ripping through every inch of her, and she cries for daddy and daddy lingers on her eyelids before disappearing forever and her body cracks against another rock before the current drags her down into the darkness of the river bottom. Her last breath floats serenly up to the surface in the shape of a few bubbles, and in those bubbles also goes her soul. They reach the surface and pop-

    -she shrinks back in fear and almost collapses on the ground. Suddenly the warmth of love is pushed aside and a feeling of great dread and fear invades her, and she finds herself torn between two opposing enemies, two foes meeting on the battlefield of her heart, fighting for control, and the tears begin to flow once more as the ravine roars with might and power. And the lights begin to grow so dim, so far...

    She shakes her head and wraps her arms tightly about her. She can cross the ravine, and over the ravine there is her desire, her paraiso, and that is ultimately what she wants. But to get there, she must first survive the abyss, and...

    What if she attempts, but fails? Her life could be taken from her, ravished by nature, and then cast crudely aside, and her life force could fade from her and all could fall into chaos and then nothingness. So she will not venture it.

    But her desire! True happiness!

    So she tries to cross the ravine. She reaches the other side, and suddenly, there is everything she could ever want. That is what she wants. She wants what lies across, wants it, knows that it can make her truly happy. True happiness. Joy. Bliss.

    But what if she fails?

    What if she doesn't attempt to cross at all? Yes! This is the way to go. She will not run the risk of crossing the ravine; it is too great and too terrible. A fate more horrible than anything she has ever known...So she will remain on this side of the rim.

    Yet...if she remained here, and did not progress or attempt to change her life, then it would remain the same, and she would be trapped on this side of life, in that which makes her unhappy. After all, to be happy is why she is here in the first place, is it not?

    But what if she waited until she thought she was ready? What if she waited until the weather clears up, or until she gets some climbing gear and a raft and maybe a guide to help her? That would increase her chances of success, and then finally, finally that which she wants so much would be hers.

    So she does that. She stands back and waits. But in her mind she can see the two globes of light blink and then slowly recede into the distance, and she can see her opportunity slipping away from her, perhaps forever. Perhaps those two globes of light have somewhere else to go, another woman to court. Maybe.

    So...no, this will not do. Crossing is the only way.
   
    But that ravine!

    She can cross.
    She can stay.

    She thinks long and hard, and finally, she decides.

    The moon looks down, quite anxious to see what will happen next.