Montana

You are walking up the hill to the cliff. You are not alone. By the time you reach the top, you will be. [[Play]]

Montana By Megan Crouse @blogfullofwords [[...]]

Autumn has dried the world, turned it brown. Leaves break into dusty, crackling piles under your feet. There: the place you grew up. Your reflection stares flat and solid in the glass of the house you are leaving. [[She watches.]] [[He watches.]] [[They watch.]]

You turn away from the house and climb the hill. A mourning dove hoots, fat and pink, somewhere in the trees. [[You're nervous.->Branch 1]] [[You're expectant.->Branch 2]] [[You're tired.->Branch 3]]

Gray sky, cold but not as cold as it should be this time of year. Not cold enough that your breath puffs. You put your hands in your pockets, then withdraw them. Rocks point skyward from under the leaves. [[Climb]]

Gray sky, cold but not as cold as it should be this time of year. You have come this way before. Your companion also looks eager, moving fast between the rocks. [[Climb]]

Gray sky, cold but not as cold as it should be this time of year. Each step is a question: can you reach the next rock? Can you rest on the rock wall, the curved-topped line of division from when farmers worked the land? (The answer to both questions is the same. You can.) [[Climb]]

Your companion (who will leave you) is looking up the hill toward the unseen cliff and the view of the countryside. [[Her steps are certain and staccato.]] [[His hair is tangled in the hood of his parka.]]

[[The cliff is waiting patiently.]]

[[Walk uphill.]] [[Talk.]]

[[Walk up the hill.]] [[Speak.]]

She tells riddles as you go. Some of them make references you have never heard before, puns on words you don't understand. She laughs, and you laugh with her anyway. You hear leaves shaking. Probably an animal in the woods. [[Freeze. Question whether bears hibernate this time of year.]] [[Shout (for any reason).]]

"What do you call the ghost of moss?" "What?" "Spook-gnum!" You hear leaves shaking. Probably an animal in the woods. [[Freeze. Question whether bears hibernate this time of year.]] [[Shout (for any reason).]]

The creature noses out of the trees. Its breath snorts and clouds. You've seen its picture in a book before: the loose-limbed sway of slow bones cloaked in quick feathers. [[Don't often see dinosaurs this close to town.]] [[Throw a rock.]]

The rustling stops. You wait until your breaths slow, then climb upward. [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

Soon the cliff is visible, radio towers on granite on limestone. This range was pushed up in the Grenville orogeny, pressed east to west like folded dough. When you were young there was such a sense of <i> surveillance</i> around the place, all the different types of watching and being watched: the radio tower, the cliff, the sense that if someone wanted to see your house without being seen they would stand here and look down. [[Keep walking.]]

The saurian sweeps around. Tail longer than your arm, well look at that. It's a skittish, needle-toothed thing and it peels off like a fighter jet, making a noise like a windstorm. It disappears into the evergreens. The rustling stops. You wait until your breaths slow, then climb upward. [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

The saurian sweeps around. Tail longer than your arm, well look at that. It's a skittish, needle-toothed thing and it peels off like a fighter jet, making a noise like a windstorm. It disappears into the evergreens. [[Talk to your companion.]] [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

"That was exciting." You say. You're short of breath. "You showed them." "Best dinosaur frightener on the East Coast." "Historic." "Prehistoric, don't you think?" "Almost." [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

You ask a question in his language and he replies in yours. [[Walk up the hill.]]

There was no lake here last time. Now, you see a patch of water that looks less like a lake than a box canyon, rectangular and three feet wide and strangely still. Cut into the hill, the bank is higher on one side. [[Walk around.]] [[Jump it.]]

There is no edge. The world repeats. [[Jump it.]]

The air above the pool is thick and humid, the water oxygenated by cuts in the rocks underground. You ask a question as you hit the ground. Your companion jumps hesitantly and reaches the small shore, but something silver falls out of his pocket and sparks in the fog. [[Check on him.]] [[Grab the item.]]

He silently tells you he's all right. This isn't the time for heroism. [["Did you need that?"]] [[Keep moving.]]

It's plastic and slippery - a USB, you think, you can see the cap - and falls like a coin into a wishing well. [["Did you need that?"]] [[Check on him.]] [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

Your feet are dry. [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

"Did you need that?" "Abnari ab n'atch." "Sorry. Zulo ti fera." "I have backups." [[The top of the hill is approaching.]]

This is the point at which they leave you. Things become vague. Numbers and adresses like lifelines are very clear. Phone calls, ciphers, thought-encryption to the nth degree. The smell of that rich dirt rolled belly-up by the glaciers. The reason they leave you is never very sound, never very logical. You understand it like you understand downhill and uphill, the way your knes hurt one way and your calves on the other. The reason belongs to them, as close and peeling as their skin. They never tell you what it is. [[Demand an answer from your companion.]] [[Demand an answer from the universe.]] [[It is acceptable not to know.]]

[[The cliff is waiting patiently.]]

There is a noise in the wind like the hissing of a dead thing. The spirit is gone but the voice remains, like water flowing downhill, like the bones under the earth. Are you ready? [[Yes.]]

Is it? Are you sure? [[Yes.]]

404 404 404 404 Be strong and of good courage, for the Lord your God ... [[Demand an answer from your companion.]] [[It is acceptable not to know.]]

The hill has changed a little bit. A herd in the woods is rustling the branches. It won't be long now. You pick your way delicately through the trees. When you get to the cliff the division between rock and air is never as clear as you remember. There is a little slope, a shrug in the land where it decides whether to commit, and you walk along this for a little while. Someone has nailed planks to a tree, but the tree stand is old, as many two-by-fours hanging down as there are nailed up. The wind is chilly. The eye of the mountain is over a rise half a mile to the east. You went there with your father once, and saw the buildup of rheum like gold and silver crystals in the dirt. You can look straight ahead and see sky. [[Approach the cliff.]] [[Walk back down the hill. You have seen enough.]]

The journey is as important as the ending, but the ending gives it shape. Must there be a moment where you realize what the middle/end of your journey will be? Does the journey criss-cross over itself too much to tell? There is a cliff. It is as old as your home. It is much older than your home, as well, but that doesn't matter as much to you. It did not shape you entirely, but it did a lot of shaping. Down and ahead sit the fields, the streets, the houses seen and unseen. Ahead of you in the distance, a two-person plane rumbles. [[Turn your grief into poetry.]] [[Turn your grief into labor.]] [[Turn your grief into noise.]]

Many stories are about leaving or being left. This is not your only story, but it is the one that waits at the cliff. It's not every day that you climb to the top.

Thus transformed, it falls. You walk down the hill. [[Start]]