Love is a mountain.
A callous wind beat furiously against Jessica's stiffening body as she fought against the blistering cold of the mountainside. Her body was shaking miserably and her eyes burned from the wind and the stinging surge of arabesque crystals that prodded mercilessly against her exposed eyes. It was still mid day and the real cold of the region had yet to descend on her but it was coming and she knew she had to find some kind of shelter before the sun ran its rounds and escaped from this harrying climate for more amicable locale.
It had been two days since the plane crashed and Jessica had been stranded on this desolate hell peak with her beloved mate and future husband, but it seemed like an eternity hence. Tears began to try to squeeze from her eyes but she held them back for fear that they would freeze them closed. She wouldn't think about Eric right now, at least not in the context of this wretched mountain. Where was she going again?
For a frightening moment she couldn't remember her destination. For a frightening moment she lost track of the heavy instrument that she carried in her back pack which held the key to their survival. For a pleasant moment it almost seemed as though the sun had come closer and the Carcerian cold had receded a bit, but then it all came back to her and her spirits both sank and hardened with resolve to push on.
She had to reach the highest point that was attainable there and put up a distress beacon. It was their only hope. Her only hope. Was anyone else left? Eric was alive when she left the plan, wasn't he? The pilots were dead, and the waitstaff, but surely Eric was still alive? She spoke to him and he told her to place the beacon but was he still alive? She couldn't wrap her mind around it properly. What other explanation could there be for him telling her what she needed to do. He was hurt in the crash but not killed, and why would she be trying so hard to save someone who was already dead? This certainly wasn't all for herself. She wasn't a selfish and shallow person like the other girls at the country clubs and in her dorm. She and Eric were the foremost of charitable people at the entire school. In fact that is how they met...
The air hung thick with heady music as furs of all manner milled about the ball room chatting amongst small cliques, politely dismissing themselves to another, and repeating the process. Sociability breaks down to how much one can be seen without becoming a nuisance after all. The lighting was low, but adequate ensuring that everyone knew it was a party but would have no problem showing of some new leftist manifesto, or piece or portfolio however it were. Carefully selected streamers lined the ceiling over the young men and women who were stepping carefully through the hot glamour of their socialite dances and the dull roar of polite conversation wrapped itself around everyone like a security blanket.
Jessica sighed to herself as she looked out over the other students who were milling about in cliques discussing the possibly overlooked benefits of communism, or the socio-economic repercussions of the Reagonomic resurgence, or the growing threat of geothermic upheaval and global warming. All of it was so big, and tiresome and no matter how much she tried to care it all seemed bothersome and over the top to her. She wasn't going to be able to change the world by picketing Trickle-Down Economics and she certainly wasn't going to be pushing for a change in the government. Why is it these 'gala events' were little more than barely informed geo-political brow beating amongst frat-house GOP, Campus Liberals, and Trust Fund Anarchists?
She had been there for a little over and hour and was wishing that college would have turned out to be more like some of the movies she had watched growing up. She envied those brash, unrefined campus heroes of the eighties with their panty raids, and bizarre mishaps that would earn them the enmity of the dean, and the love of the college, or maybe even the president. Even the tri-lambs had enjoyed a greater collegiate experience than anything she was finding so far. In any even event here it was, the end of her freshman year and little to nothing exciting had shown its face. She began to wonder if perhaps she should have gone to a state school instead.
She sipped at the wine that she had selected early and straitened her dress a bit. It was a relatively elegant piece of tailory that she had had custom fitted a few days before. The dress, and polite blue started just below her collar bones and tapered off near her knees. As she liked to put it, it left plenty to the imagination while letting one know that there was plenty there to imagine. The young vixen was quite good at presenting an image and even at this age, and in this environment she was quite certain that image would be everything in her career. She wasn't going to be one of those silly young things in a Girls Gone Wild video, or another random rape statistic, or a poor drunken fool who falls from her dorm balcony to death. Still, it occurred to her that any one of those mistakes (save death or paralysis) might come out as a growing experience for her life. If nothing else it would serve to spice things up a bit.
"What are you doing over here garnering the wall" asked one of the other young debutantes who at the time was attending the party, "you should be out meeting and greeting. It's a party, not a funeral."
Jessica looked over and smiled at the young woman who was interloping on her thoughts. It was another one of the girls from her dorm, a sorority girl who had been there a mere year longer than the vixen.
"Oh, I'm sorry" she said in a polite tone with a sudden smile, "I think it's the wine, dear. It might also be the conversation as well, but I'm feeling a bit exhausted."
The young squirrel who had addressed her giggled in that light-headed way that always made Jessica's stomach turn just a little bit. Maybe it was her way of simply feeling superior but she had felt that her peers should have grown out of that kind of reaction five years ago.
"Oh I know!" the girl replied, "I just know what you mean! All of this chatter about the middle east this, and the AIDS crisis that, and global warming and what not. You'd think we'd have something cheerier to converse about in this climate. Honey if your feeling under the weather we could gets some girls together and find a better party. I'm sure we could dig up some kind of diversion." The squirrel smiled surreptitiously and earned a touch more of Jessica's chagrin.
"Besides" she continued in a lower voice, "I haven't seen you with a boy the entire time you've been here. First semesters are one thing, darling, but you have to settle in eventually. This is the one time in your life you can really cut loose and then never feel guilty about it. By now you must be screaming for a good stiff one, eh?"
Jessica was, at the moment, certainly not 'screaming for a good stiff one'. In fact her studies had consumed a good deal of her time, and her distaste for her fellow students had put a great deal of her breeding instincts on halt. Never the less she smiled away her disgust at the suggestion and neatly hid it as she had learned to do so many years ago.
"Not the best time, darling" she said as she took a small sip of her chardonnay, "that is to say bad timing. If I went after a man right now then there would be stories all over campus about it. You know how men are about these things, and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about?" The squirrel did in fact catch on after a moment of thinking and she laughed at the notion.
"Of course" she said as she put her hand gently on the vixen's shoulder, "We wouldn't want any of that, would we? A girl has to protect her dignity and all of that mess."
"Of course" Jessica replied, glad that her counterpart did not have some wry excuse as to why a delicate condition wouldn't make a difference to these campus lotharios "Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but you must excuse me. I'm going to powder my nose. Love ya!" The squirrel returned her affection and parted her company with a superficial sideways cheek kiss in pale imitation of the European stereotype.
The vixen sighed with soft relief of her departure which was notably fast enough to betray her true feelings on the conversation and turned to head towards the bathroom. She had no real reason to go there but it would provide a quiet respite from the music, and the yammering mass unless a couple of young furs decided to be adventurous. She polished off her wine and set it down on a table to be collected with out slowing down which took her eyes off her path for a mere instant. When she looked back up the path she had been following was now occupied by a young man who was a blur in her eyes for an instant. She stepped back and realized that she had collided with a well dressed young fox who was now wearing (in addition to his suit) the drink he had been carrying. Such a feaux pas was relatively unknown to her and stunned her for a brief instant. Then she noticed his eyes.
"Oh goodness, I'm sorry, ma'am" he said as he turned towards her. He set his drink down quickly and took the handkerchief out of his pocket as the crowd he had been talking to took notice of the incident and frowned at Jessica judgmentally.
"I thought you were stopping at the table, I really did" he continued, now gently dabbing stray drops of his Manhattan from her arm with no apparent concern for his own clothing, "I didn't mean to block your path or anything."
"It's..." She said, and paused as she felt her cheeks burning under the discerning gaze of his crowd, "It's ok. It's really my fault now, isn't it? I wasn't watching where I was going." She took hold of the hand that was dabbing at her bare arms and guided it to the spot on his suit coat to sop up the liquor there. "I'm fine" she asserted, and found herself smiling strangely into his sharp, blue eyes, "You should worry instead about this suit. It's worth more than I am I'm sure."
She giggled a little to herself and the sound was strange to her. She had never giggled like that in her life. She felt like a vapid cheerleader with a new crush for a moment and it made the pit of her stomach hurt. She coughed the last of it out and covered her mouth as she blushed from the silliness of the sound she had made and looked sheepishly at the young man. He was smiling.
"I'm Eric" he said, seemingly delighted not by the giggle, but by the reaction in her that it brought, "I'm going to need to clean this out at least a bit. If it's as much your fault as you claim you can come help if your conscience burdens you to. I don't expect such a thing at a gathering like this though." He delivered upon her that sly, vulpine smile of his and cocked a perfectly placed wink.
Jessica bit her lip to avoid tittering like a school maid a second time and looked around as though she had friends waiting for her to get back. Realizing she was there more or less alone, she looked back to him and shrugged stiffly.
"Sure" she said, "Why not? I've got a conscience."
The snow began to come down a little harder as the moments passed and Jessica felt more and more like passing out. There was a sort of romance to it really, a sort of poetic nightmare in freezing to death on a mountainside, the lost victim of a wrecked plane. She laughed a bit in spite of herself and pushed on. Who knows, maybe it would come down to eating the pilots or the flight staff to keep from starving here in the cold, uncaring wilderness. Her plight was so painfully mundane it could have sprang from the dreariest amateur's Macbook and into print on the pages of the cheesiet pulp fiction magazine.
"Surviving the Mountain, by Joe Everyman: A Naturalist Tale of Inspiring Spirit in the face of Hopeless Odds."
Sure, why couldn't it be, she wondered? Why couldn't someone right her sad little story for whatever gain, or posterity they might seek to pontificate it for? She had already been over the dreadful triteness of the theme and its commonality. Every great has taken a hack at it, and every hack has taken an axe to it. Why should her story be any different? She felt a bit warmed by this and pushed on.
The sun was sinking slowly over the peaks to the west, and it was getting harder and harder to breath. They had come down fairly high in the mountain which left a surprisingly short climb for her to plant the beacon. Still, nothing had helped to warm her like the amusement of her little story becoming the next big Made for TV Movie of the Week. Who was she kidding? This story would be barely worthy of Lifetime Originals.
Jessica followed the strange young man towards the bathroom where he presumed to clean his coat and mused quietly to herself as to why she was really going. Well, or course it had been her plan to go there in the first place, but he was heading towards the door with the wrong little blue symbol on the front. For her anyway. She quietly smiled to herself as she thought about it but it made the most sense. The men's room was never as clean as a person would like it to be but it was a place of no nonsense business. The task gets done and the participants get out leaving more room for the next lot. The women's restroom was more famous for gossip, preening and various other jabberings in spite of the need that others just outside might express. Sometimes it was a haven for girls who don't even need to go, but rather just want a private place to chat about their dates, or the gross guys that are hitting on them.
In any even it made more sense from that perspective, but there were other things to occupy her mind. Why was she going into any water closet with this charming specimen of masculinity? She wasn't some easy little damsel that fell this way or that and defined her existence by the success or failure of her latest relation ship, and she certainly wasn't starved for attention. She was very secure in herself. She had read in her women's studies class that a female of her species determines within seven seconds of meeting a male whether or not she will sleep with him. She almost laughed as she tried to unlock her subconscious biology to determine if it was true.
It was less than a minute before they closed the bathroom door to when it was locked and the pair of them was entwined in a heated embrace. The strangest thing to Jessica was that he had said nothing of the like. He merely flashed her one glance of those unmistakably rare orbs and she was on him. It had been his quick thinking to lock to door and make sure the room stayed empty.
Her mind stayed focused to a surprising extent as their passion played out. A thousand thoughts ran through her mind in spite of the distraction that her body played on with it's singular, decisive need. She was heavily making out with a man she met less than two minutes ago in a bathroom. Stranger still was his manner. She was being more aggressive than he was, and he carried an almost politeness to his touch that she didn't expect. She found that while he still had moved his hand over her rump, his other was engaged in tightly holding her own, and despite never missing a beat he was softly caressing her fingers.
Her free paw clutched at his chest and roamed over his back as their deep kiss broke and he began to move his lips softly over her neck and shoulder. She could feel an insatiable heat rising in his body as this daring paramour tickled her body in that just so perfect fashion. A part of her was enjoying the feel of the fabric of his pants when she became aware that the paw in question was roaming of its own accord. A raw fascination gripped her to think of the action as such, but that was how it felt.
"Where are you going, Thing?" she thought to herself as her rebellious paw slipped over the in seam of his suit-pants, but her question was soon answered as her palm slipped over the bulge of his masculinity and squeezed gently. Eric lifted his nose slowly, dragging it along the seam of her neck as he went until he reached her ear. Giving a small pause to nibble the lobe of her good head's side-long appendage he put his hand on her fore arm.
"This isn't a good place, my dear" he said with a strange mixture of detachment and deep fondness simultaneously, "If you're ready for that I suggest we slip away to somewhere more... romantic? Or at least more memorable."
The vixen agreed. The pair slipped discreetly out of the bathroom and to Jessica's amazement nobody seemed to notice. She was sure someone must have, but it didn't seem that way at the time. There was an insistent positive feeling in her that she would have noticed as her senses seemed as sharp as anything she had ever felt before in her life. Somewhere more appropriate... There was only one thing she could come up with on such short notice that was close enough that it didn't require a car ride that might ruin the mood: Her dorm room that was across the court yard.
The pair of foxes ran happily through the dark courtyard laughing as they felt the dew moist grass kiss their ankles. The moon hung pleasantly, fat in the sky and low clouds passed in lazy circuits, their thick peaks rising high over the dark base like rolling, jutted mountains of bright silver.
(the Mountain...)
Jessica moved almost terpsichorean as this strange young beau followed her along with her hand held tightly in his. He reached over and took her other paw in his and began to run faster. She smiled and stared at him with a look of almost confusion. Has he finally gotten up the standard male drive, she wondered, but in that instant he started to turn and took her off her feet.
The vixen found herself lifted from the ground and spinning around him in a helicopter motion like her older brother used to do when she was a child. She squealed and laughed with a mixture of pleasure and outrage at his presumption, and looked around with mad amusement of her plight.
(Dime store pulp fiction...)
He began to slow and somehow brought her down parallel to him so he could catch her, and the pair fell onto the damp lawn in front of her dorm and kissed again, long, and deep.
(the Mountain)
(Sad plight)
(Made for TV Movie)
"Eric?" she asked him as she broke there kiss and craned her neck to allow him to kiss her there.
"Yeah?" he replied as he smooched along the sensitive flesh of her neckline.
"Let's go inside" she said with warmth in her throat. Thick, heady warmth and the feeling of meaningful confession. "It's cold, and wet out here."
(Love is a Mountain)
(Do you love?)
(Let's get you dry.)
The fox boy had her on her feet before she realized it and they were heading up to the door. It took her three tries to get the door to open thanks to the lock-code on the front but it finally buzzed green and allow them passage.
"Let's get you dry." He said as they began to climb the stairs and smiled compassionately at her. She felt her heart melt in her chest but she knew deep down there must be more than what it seemed. He probably did this at a different party every night of the week.
"Two more flights" she said, "Eric?" He slowed to match her pace as though it were her who would have to lead him where they would go.
"Yeah?" he asked, and kissed her. It wasn't like how she kissed him, but sweetly. There was passion, but it was subdued, and mannerly.
"Don't take this the wrong way" she said, "but I've gotta ask. Do you love?" The fox looked at her with a smirk as if he would say "what?" but she made sure he wouldn't. "Not me" she said as she placed a finger over his lips, "I wouldn't ask that. I mean do you love? Can you love? Would you love? Have you loved? Pick one and answer. Any given question, please. Indulge my corniness."
His eyes lit brightly in the reflected glory of the pregnant moon that shown outside the window, and he flashed her one of those irresistible, vulpine grins.
"You bet I do, can will, and have." He said, and gently stroked her cheek. "You're not like the others, are you, little Jessica?"
The next few moments were a blur of motion as they hurried to her room and made it inside. Jessica was one of those lucky few who had managed to maintain a private dwelling. To her it felt like a task that was no less daunting than it had been for Andy Dufresne when he spent his happy stay in Shawshank, but in this case there was no tunneling out or guarantee of maintenance. She had resolved to keep her room vacant of loud, obnoxious room mates as long as possible, then go quietly into that good night when the day came.
The day to come didn't matter. All that matter was the frantic stripping of clothing, the mash of bodies, and warm aroma's that rose from them. They hit her bed in a state of half dress and returned to hotly meshing their tongues over each other as they had the entire walk there. Eric was still holding her hand even as his free paw encircled, and caressed her bosom. Her body was on fire.
She rushed over her trying hard to keep her passion in line with the cool, methodical calculation of his but it was a failing effort. Her fingertips read the hard lines of his well kept physique as his played smoothly over the soft curves of hers. She reached again for his member but he stopped her and made her wait until he had completely undressed the both of them. Their passion grew.
(The Mountain)
The vixen remembered his hands in their surgeon-steady sureness. How they moved from her neck, to her nipples, and around the mounting bulge of her bosom, to the soft curve of her mid rift and back with out quite touching off the final trigger of her sex. She was not so sure with him. Her fingers rubbed eagerly over his belly, and sides as she encouraged his passion in him, and finally they encircled the length of his man hood with excited desire. She had almost expected to find him limp because of how cool he seemed.
(Sad Plight)
In spite of her heated attention he maintained his composure and continued to play over her body as though he were tuning up a vintage automobile that was well worth his time, and love. The vixen couldn't take it. Her body burned, and ached for him in every inch of her. She squirmed, and moistened and whined under him until she felt that she would begin begging before long when she realized that he was moving.
(Dime Store Fiction)
His head descended slowly, and the notice brought a touch of sobriety to her thoughts. His tongue extended and drew a neat circle around her breast that began to concentrically close towards her nipple. The soft pink appendage lapped gingerly there for a long moment before he began to sink again along her chest, then belly, then mid rift.
The hot scent of her sex rose to her nose as she bit her lip to near bloodiness and gasped as he slipped over her, barely brushing her length. He kissed her thigh tenderly and licked the hot moisture from it as he moved to her knee. At long last he worked back towards her prize, and teasingly tested the burning valley of her femininity with the bare tip of his tongue. Jessica whined loudly with delight and scratched at his ears.
"Hey babe" he said coyly as she groaned in her throat from the withdrawal of his organ from hers, "Do you love?" She let out a frustrated laugh and waited for him to continue. She looked down at him with confusion and there were those eyes. They stared back at her from just above the dripping center of her sexuality with absolute severity and earnest. She found her mouth dry and realized he was all too serious.
"Yeah babe" she said with a smile, "You better believe it." He drew his tongue along the length of her crescent as if to thank her for the answer. Her dew soaked curtain shuddered at the rough touch.
"You'll forgive me then?" he asked and she looked again to make sure he was serious.
"Yeah, babe," she said, "I'll forgive you. For what though?" He blushed sheepishly and looked as though he might move away from her and it frightened her in a way that was shocking.
"I didn't step into your way on accident" he confessed, "I saw you coming, I knew what I was doing, and I stepped into your way. I just wanted to talk to you. I saw you standing by yourself against the wall, and I couldn't help thinking 'that one isn't like the others. She hates this mess as much as I do. I've gotta talk to her somehow'. So you see, it was my fault entirely and you didn't have to come. I'm sorry I deceived you." She started to laugh and say it was all right, but she was cut off as his nose descended into her privates and his organ of taste explored the region deeply, and skillfully.
(Love is a mountain)
Their passion carried on long into the night in every which direction one cares to imagine. It was far more than the vixen had ever hoped to get out of the evening, and by the end left her breath long taken, and her body exhausted.
"That was great." He said as he held her tightly in her arms, "I'm glad I was brave enough to step in front of you. I was scared silly." It seemed so strange to Jessica but it seemed to piece together for her. He was like a snake that had found its way into her house when she was young.
"He's more scared o' you than you are o' him" her father had told her before he picked the offending ophidian up and carried it over to her. She tentatively reached out and touched it's cool, smooth length with dread fascination and suddenly it seemed so small, and harmless. The memory had returned to her years later when she saw her first man. It's more scared of you, than you are of it. It had helped. It didn't seem as scary anymore.
But here was something that totally took her off guard. All the care, all the meticulous scrutiny put into every motion, every soft touch, every held paw, or knock-down, drag-out no-holds-barred fucking was to make a good impression. She smiled and threaded her fingers affectionately through those that rested on his paw.
"Hey babe" she said softly, her voiced cracked as she held back tears of the good variety, "Do you love?" The young man behind her smiled and kissed her lovingly on the back of her neck. His chin slipped over her shoulder until it was even with her ear.
"You better believe it."
Jessica shook herself free from her memories and pushed herself into the present. The snow was picking up and the sun was going down. That same cruel, care free wind was blowing more powerfully now and leaching the warmth from her body like a hungry child pulling live from its mother's teat. She took a deep breath of thin, frigid air and pushed on.
Tiny flakes of snow whipped around her from above and below as she tramped through the deepening drifts and she found walking harder and harder. It began to feel like her eyes were going to shrivel up in her head or crawl back into her skull for warmth but she didn't dare close them. She had no idea how long she had been walking but her legs were burning as though someone had cut them open and poured saline into her veins. She remembered reading somewhere how the higher you climb the thinner the air gets and people who aren't use to the pressure change suffer all manner of indignities from the atmosphere but she couldn't stop. She couldn't go back, Eric was depending on her.
The wall to her left was steep and high and she didn't know if she would ever find a path that would let her up. It was too sheer to climb without gear and she wasn't about to risk her life and their only hope on a foolish pipe dream of athleticism. This wasn't some silly feminine hygiene commercial and she was not out here to prove her feminine independence by rock climbing or hang gliding or some other symbolically powerful fear of sportsmanship. This was greater than all of those things because it was life and death, and she'd have some real war stories to tell her feminist Women's Studies professor when she got back.
"So there we were on the mountainside" she would say, "the plain wrecked, the pilots dead, and only I had the good common sense to remain uninjured. My beloved male whom I care deeply for and respects the power of the feminine goddess within me was badly injured and needed help that I was wise enough to know I couldn't accommodate, and so I was left the only one who could climb that goddamned mountain and place the Beacon where non of the peaks would interrupt us. Distress had been called by the pilot, but that wouldn't mean they would know where to look and the beacon meant the difference between them arriving in a few days, or a week or more. I made it, planted the beacon, and made it back. Now, I'm a hero, and though I couldn't save the lives of those whom died on impact, my life partner and the children we will create through the power of my insurmountable, feminine gifts will be there to thank me for being a strong female, not some bottle nursed gatherer that the patriarchy would have had me grow into."
...Or some other picnic basket of shit sandwiches. She giggled quietly to her self in her adult, knowing fashion at the thought and pushed on a little harder. She would need to sleep soon but it was comforting to her that she had probably found her thesis material. Sure, it was as shit sandwich, but it was the kind that everyone in America takes a bite of and smiles, because shit tastes great. Mmmm... Shit sandwich. Who can get enough? It goes great on toast with a nice can of Campbell's Chicken N' Stars.
The cave almost blind-sided her but whatever it did it brought her out of her newest reverie. She laughed and almost fell over as she inspected the mouth. It was her chance to rest and get some food in her stomach and some energy back. By her watch she had been walking up there for four hours and who knows how far. This was an absolute blessing and with the wind up as it was she didn't know how long it would be before her cheeks started to die from frost bite.
She reached the mouth a little more quickly than she probably should. Were she thinking more clearly she probably would have gone a touch more carefully. She didn't expect to find any strange beasts or monsters or what not inside, but caves aren't usually dangerous because of monsters or animals. In this case she was lucky, there were no sudden drops, or razor sharp ledges, or thin floors that collapse out from under you. There was however a good deal of ice on the floor that Jessica probably should have thought about as she ran towards it.
The vixen the mouth of the cave and started to slow down but it was too late. Her feet slipped from underneath her and she plummeted to the floor. She let out a yelp in the split second it took for her body to land with a sickening crunch on the stone below.
Jessica screamed. Until now she had held her voice down to conserve her energy but the pain had been throbbing. Now it was a screaming shriek in the sensitive nerves of her olfactory cluster, and her lips, and mouth. Her screams reverberated through the cave and down the mountainside. There was a distant rumble and it might have occurred to someone it may be an avalanche but Jessica was in no shape to care. She screamed and screamed, and held her nose which seemed to move unnaturally. She began to feel pleasant warmth on her fingers and realized that she was bleeding badly. She wobbled to her feet and carefully made her way deeper into the cave.
She would have found her self lucky on a better day as she discovered that the cave bent after about ten feet and almost wrapped around before it terminated. It would make an excellent shelter for the night, but as of right now she was more concerned with sobbing and the aching pain in her face. She took off her gloves now just glad that the wind was off of her and dug through her bag. Inside was a survival kit they had put on the plane for just such an occasion. The benefits of private flights, she thought. Inside there was a nice brick of fire-block. She fought with her cold stiffened fingers to light the block and after some time it grudgingly began to burn.
Jessica wrapped herself in the cold weather blanket she had brought with her and took out some water and soups she had in the bag. The cold didn't seem as bad here and she hoped that it wasn't a sign of shock. She was fairly certain her nose was broken and she was sure that on closer inspection she had cracked two of her front teeth out.
She ate, drank and lay down with her head on her bag so it stayed elevated and hoped the bleeding would stop soon. As she had expected there was nothing in her first aid kit for it but some cotton and she feared she would drown in her sleep if she halted the flow. Jessica closed her eyes and drifted uneasily to sleep, her gloves laid by the fire to dry the blood that soaked them.
The morning after the party romp had been something special. Jessica woke to find Eric's arms still wrapped tightly around her, and that he had awakened before her. He kissed her softly on the cheek and wordlessly got out of bed.
"Would you like some breakfast?" he asked her in a sweet tone, some of the intensity he had borne the night before had receded, "or should I start you a shower?"
"Nah" she replied, "Not right now. Could you come back to bed?" She smiled at him hopefully and found her chest swelling as he smiled happily and climbed back into her appliance. He took her firmly in his arms and gently caressed her shoulder.
"Thanks" she said softly, "I had a really good time last night, but I feel like I barely know you. What classes are you taking?" He put his finger over her mouth, shushing her.
"None of that" he said, "We can't talk about things like that until this evening at the earliest." She looked at him a touch confused.
"This is the morning after" he continued, "and anything we say right now will be pillow talk so we can't say anything important, right? We have to save it for a proper date or it will be trivialized and we can't have that. Love is a mountain, babe, and these are just the foot hills. Save your energy for the steep part."
She sighed, satisfied with his answer and lay there content to be held. He was scared to step in front of her, he had said, more afraid of her than she was of him. She smiled broadly and closed her eyes again.
Jessica felt the cold seeping back into her body and opened her eyes. Her fire block had burned itself out in the time she had been sleeping and she wondered how long had actually passed. She sat up quickly and yelped as the dried, and frozen blood on her face held fast to her pillow and ripped fur from her cheek. The pain in her nose returned to her but it was lessened into a dull throb, and she sat there in the pitch black favoring her tendered face.
Suddenly, a terrible thought raced through her mind. She couldn't feel the fingers that were touching her face. She couldn't move them at all. As she felt over them she realized that they were frozen solid. A shrill scream escaped her lips, followed by a series of deep, sorrowful sobs.
"NO!" she screamed pitifully amidst her sobbing, "Please, God no! Move! Move you fuckers! God, please, make them move!" Her voice trailed off into unintelligible weeping and she leaned back against the letting her panic, and sorrow echo off the slopes of the damnable cave that had housed her.
She had let her paw slip out from under the blanket in the night. Perhaps she was reaching for some unseen phantom of her love nearby. Whatever the case was the result was clear. Her left hand was largely useless and there was little hope for it now. She couldn't think of herself anyway. Eric needed her, and it was his life on the line, not some needful, but expendable appendage. She tried to push herself to her feet, but found herself unable to pull her emotions under control. She sobbed and begged for her hand to come back for a bit longer.
"Get up you baby."
The vixen choked her cries off and drug her dead paw across her eyes to dry them.
"I said get up and quit being a baby." It was her brother. He was standing over her looking down judgmentally as if he could see through the dark, but she could see him well enough. Maybe it wasn't as dark as she had previously thought...
"Get up and quit bein' a bitch, baby" He spat at her, "what do you think, cryin's gonna make it better? Well it ain't. Get up and quit yer belly achin' and keep tryin. That bike ain't gonna ride itself." She stared at him in utter confusion.
"How... How did you get up here?" she asked, and her expression brightened some, "Did you come with the plane? Rescue's here? Oh thank god! Thank god!" She started to weep again, but her brother's expression stayed resolutely disgusted.
"Damnit, Jessa, what did I just say to you?!" he said and drew back like he might strike her, "get up and quit bein' a whiny ass, cry baby bitch. Get up! Get up or I'll tell mom and dad you've been cussin' and they'll switch you for it, and I won't take you to the movies Friday with my friends. No pussy ass cry baby bitch is gonna hang out with us so quit bein' one and get back on the bike." She stared at him nonplussed for a moment and her lip began to quiver. She picked up and gloves and found them thankfully dry.
With great effort she pushed her bad hand into one as far as it would go. It hurt like hell but it seemed to work well enough. It was harder to get her good hand in without any help from the band one, and broken teeth but she managed. She stuffed her equipment into her pack and with great effort zipped it back shut. Then she wrapped her head back up the best she could with one hand. A thought occurred to her and she removed the beacon and turned it on before placing back into her pack. She stood and made her way carefully to the exit of the cave.
The snow had calmed, but with the sun up the blanket became a reflective sheet of hell on her eyes. After a few moments she took her arm down to let a little more light in and slowly adjusted to it.
"Good job" her brother said, "I'll take you with us to the movies after all, and guess what? My treat babe! You won't have to spend your allowance on nothin'!" She felt the warm kiss of the sun on her skin, and a cool breeze carrying the autumn scent of Indiana maples. Her brother's strong arm wrapped around her shoulders and wiped her tears from her eyes. She finally made it down that hard stretch from Gravity Hill between Raccoon Road and State Road 42. Rich had always said "you beat that hill and you ride that bike. Ain't no two ways around it. Let the hill beat you and you might as well keep them training wheels on forever. Then quit school and kill yerself cuz you ain't worth shit if you can't ride a bike."
The earth was soft, but firm as it always was this time of year, long after the spring rains had passed and just before the cool of winter started to come in, and the trees were putting on their magic show that proved they were ready to go to sleep. It was like they wanted to do something so you would remember them come this time next year. Red and gold leaves of maple, birch and oak drifted lazily by as she looked up into her brother's young face. He was a few years older than her and hadn't been that thrilled by the prospect of having a little sister, but by this age, by the time she was seven, he seemed determined to make sure she "knew how kid was supposed to live" and "to teach her how to be a fine young lady."
"Oh god" she said, her hands shaking furiously, "Thank you rich, thank you so much." She opened her eyes to look at him again, and she was alone. The wind howled mournfully through the hollow of the cave behind her, and snow was flowing wispily through the air.
"Rich" she mouthed, and remembered her self. Eric needed her. She better get moving. "If I let this mountain beat me" she said under her breath, "then I might as well keep these training wheels forever."
The night went better than she had imagined. It was a phenomenally pleasant date. Not outstanding, but extremely pleasant. The kind of date that is outstanding if you really take the time to let it be without mistaking life for some bad romantic comedy. They had gotten to know each other a little better, and promised to meet again with those same promises.
"Do you love?"
(Love is a mountain)
"Babe, you better believe it.
She wondered if she would hear from him again, especially after he hadn't called her almost three days. That was the rule, three days and your out. Her hopes had been answered though when he called her at the last minute. He explained that if he hadn't waited then he wouldn't know if she was sure of herself. If he pushed the limit and she still wanted to go well, now we had something to work with. Love is a mountain babe, and these are only the foot hills. It gets a lot steeper from here so we need to save our energy. Was he always right about everything? That could get old fast.
The pair became a staple. Inseparable at any function or party they were together everywhere they went. They were that obnoxious fairy tale couple that seems so sure of themselves wherever they go, and their so quick to tell you "there is someone for everyone! Just look!" Well, that isn't quite true. They would nod knowingly in some situations to tell you that, but they would never say it. Perhaps that made it worse.
They didn't seem to be hiding some underlying fear that they were deluding themselves with irritating self-help book nonsense. They were so secure in themselves and their relationship that they wouldn't even talk about it to other people. In fact they barely talked about other people to each other.
The world became two separate places for them. The was the world apart, and the world together. The two did not mingle for fear one would taint the other. You wouldn't keep milk and meat in the same cold box, would you? For the same reason they kept the world out of their love and their love out of the world. It was a private matter. There were rocks in the road of course. Just like the stretch between 42 and Raccoon Road they call Gravity Hill it was pocked and scarred as the face of the moon, but they weathered them. There was a cheating scandal (which turned out to be a rumor, but that really never goes away, does it?) and a pregnancy scare, but nothing really seemed to be able to stop the couple. Things sure slowed them down, but they had come this far and damned if this mountain would stop them. If they quit now, they might as well keep those training wheels forever.
That is why it was so important that she keep going. This was just a little mountain, and not nearly as high and hard as love is. Hell, this is a termite mound, a gopher hole, a fucking pimple. This was a hurtle; just one of the foot hills. It was nothing compared to what she had still to go through and she wasn't about to give up.
"Hey! Jes! Jessa!" The vixen cringed. She turned slowly to take in the young woman who came bounding up to her. "Hey hon! Hon! Wait up, ok?!"
"Maxi, Maxine, baby" she said without much expression, "What is it? What's up?" The girl pranced up, mink bola around her neck as she liked in the winter, with her wide half coat and belly shirt. Jessica couldn't help but think that you had to be a fucking nitwit to wear a belly shirt in the cold, but then you had to be a nitwit to wear a snow-bunny hat at all.
"Jes-baby, where are you off to in such a hurry" she huffed at her and looked up with a hurt expression, "You almost made me, like, bust a lung or something trying to catch you. Why didn't you stop when you heard me calling? Ring, Ring. Hello? Oh hi. Yeah she's right here, hold on: It's the Rude Patrol, they totally want to talk to you." She held out her thumb and pinky finger as if to make a fake phone out of them and smiled at the fox.
"Look, Maxi" Jessica said sheepishly, "I'm sorry, hon. I'm really busy though. I have to get this to the highest point I can reach. It's really, REALLY important ok, I have to get back to Eric-"
"Oh Eric, Eric, Eric" she chastised, "That is all I ever hear from you. Hello! You have a life outside of him! What, have you like, reached the end of the leash or something? Get like, empowered or whatever Mrs. Bitchowitz is always whimpering about at the highschool. He doesn't like, own you. Now come on!" She grabbed Jessica's arm and pulled her affectionately, "Let's go! Taking back Sunday is totally playing tonight and I have, like, three tickets! You, me and Bobby can totally go!"
"No! Maxine! This is really serious!" She pulled her arm away and looked at her with a confused and severe look on her face. She didn't like the hurt expression the young woman gave her. Maxi was very sensitive, and Jessica was the only friend she had that wouldn't dump her based on her popularity at school. Jessica was the only one who would help her pass her classes without just feeding her cheats, and the only one who would believe her when she said that her uncle... Well, when the unpleasantness went down.
Sometimes Jessica found the girl insufferably obnoxious, but it wasn't her fault. She wasn't very smart, but she was energetic and resourceful. She didn't like to hurt her feelings because it wasn't like when the other girls did it; it would stick.
"Eric might die, Maxi! It's not just some dumb date! I'm sorry!" She turned and started walking but her old friend wasn't finished yet.
"It's ok, Jesi-baby" she said in a calm, more intuitive voice, "He'll be alright. At least you said goodbye to him. At least you told him you loved him, or whatever weird shit you guys say to each other in its place. Better than what I got. You just left me! Left me to die in BFE Mooresville! Left me to die with Bobby, that fucking twit!"
Jessica was on her knees in an instant holding her food hard to keep it from leaving her stomach. The wind blew cold against her and snow was drifting over her bent legs. She looked back and her childhood friend was gone. The mountain was deadly silent save for the whistling of the wind and it came back to her.
Maxine never came back from that show, and Jessica had always felt that it was her fault. When the young woman had come bouncing up to her yammering about having the tickets she had blown her off. Not as rudely as this time, but none the less she made excuses. She didn't want to spend the night at a small, poorly ventilated club where the sound equipment was twenty years older then the geriatrics who run the place. California had indeed spoiled her rotten.
Besides, she wanted to spend the night introducing Eric to her family. She was home for a whole two weeks anyway so the poor girl could wait one night. Surely she could, right?
When Maxi didn't call the next day Jessica thought that she was just miffed and giving her the silent treatment. The next day she had forgotten the incident, but Maxine wasn't miffed at being blown off. Jesi-baby would be there for like, two weeks after all, right?
Bobby's junk yard special of a car had broken down along Highway 67 between Martinsville and Brooklyn. They were right dab smack in a long drag from no where to deep space. Bob had drank himself into a genuine stupor and she was driving them home, honestly a little too inebriated herself for it to be safe. If Jessica had been there, she would have been driving but that wouldn't have stopped the car from stalling. Then again it turned out they had just let it run out of gas on the thirty mile return drive.
With Bobby passed out, Maxine had gotten out and began walking down the highway. It didn't matter which direction she had gone. The closest civilization was an equal distance both ways. At some point on the long, dark walk, she had stepped into the road in front of a semi trying to wave him down and was struck. The driver didn't even feel the impact. She was small and he was barely awake. He had apparently taken the night off of speeding because it was a short run. Maxine was thrown from the road against a tree, and into a gully beside the road. Her back had been broken, as had one of her arms. No one was close enough to hear her cry for help, or her screams of agony. It was a twenty five foot incline from where she landed to the road. Somehow, the small woman made it all the way to the asphalt shoulder before her poor little body just gave up. She was found that morning by a commuter. It was three days before Jessica heard, a record slow time for the movement of news in Mooresville.
Jessica had not cried at her funeral, but nobody expected her to. Jessica was the weird girl that nobody wanted around. She didn't act like the other girls and she always sounded like she thought she was better than everybody else. It was good that she left her home to go all the way to California to attend that fancy school where the good clean folk and their small town wouldn't be burdened by her. Only her brother understood. At the funeral, he put a strong, engine-hardened hand on her shoulder and said:
"Hey brat. This is one of those times when it is ok to cry." She didn't.
Jessica pushed herself back to her feet and started shakily walking forward again. It felt like she might be losing parts of her feet now. She let out a long, loud sob started to fall to her knees but she caught herself and kept moving. She couldn't hold it back any longer. The years of holding it back were done now, and it would all come out. She sobbed loudly through the valleys and let them ring out over the peaks. Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, let me fear no evil, baby. Shout it from the high mountain tops! Let freedom ring, darling, yeah!
Her sobbing finally stopped and she realized she wasn't moving any longer. She was sitting in the snow, buried up to her waste from drift. She looked around a little and realized one of her eyes was frozen shut. She started to put her head down and she heard a soft voice call to her.
"No" she said in a weak pout, "No. Leave me alone. I can't do it. I can't walk any more. I can't feel my feet, I can't feel my hands, oh God, somebody help me. God help me, any body, please..."
"Jessica!" it came again, this time louder. Was it closer, maybe? She slowly lifted her head and looked. The path was blurry and her eyes were weak but she could make something out. "Jessica! Get up babe! Get up! You're almost there!"
"Eric!" she cried out with what she thought might have been the last of her strength. She pushed herself back on to her dying feel and hobbled towards him! "Eric! Oh god, by feet! I need help!" She could see the wreckage of the plane behind him. He was propped up on a seat that he must have pushed out, and bundled tightly.
"You're ok!" he yelled, "you're gonna make it!" She pushed, and pushed and pushed with everything she had until she had finally reached him at last.
"Eric!" she whined weakly as she collapsed beside him. His leg and arm were broken and poorly splinted. For a second she was enraged that he would move when she had told him not to.
"A little further babe, come on! You can do it!" he shouted, "You can do it babe, I know you can! I can't carry you, though. It's only a few more feet! Just a few more feet babe, and we'll be ok!" She screamed in frustrated rage, and pain and started to pull herself along the freezing ice, and finally against the opening to the plane. With the last of everything she had, he hauled herself inside, and Eric helped the best he could with his injuries.
"You did it babe, you did it!" he congratulated her, kissed her frostbitten lips tenderly, "I knew you would! The rescue helicopter is on its way! They picked up the beacon yesterday." She smiled brightly and reached up to touch his face.
"Oh God, Eric" she said weakly, "really? Are they really coming?" It was so warm in his arms. The cabin was cold but out of the wind, and under his eyes. His brilliant, sky blue eyes that were small orbs in a man's face, but oceans of thought made small enough to understand. They were coming, and she had saved them.
"Wake up, Jessica, stay with us!" Eric's face had taken on a different expression. Now it was worry, or maybe fear? She looked over and realized which hand it was that had been stroking her cheek. It was the left...
Jessica sprang up and felt a shrill heat all over her body. A strong hand pushed back down and she looked around frantically. Bright lights assaulted her, and there was more than one person shuffling around. Her legs were tied down and a man in a mask was looking into her eyes with a light. "She's with us!" he said, "She's fine. Nurse?" The man moved out of her view and a softer hand dabbed a cloth along her forehead.
"You gave us a scare, babe" a soothing, familiar voice said, "but you're ok now. You did really well in spite of everything, and you're here just in time. I have something to show you. She looked at her hands, and they were fine. She looked up and Eric was there in a scrub holding something. His eyes were brilliant, like cerulean flames.
"What happened?" she asked a second from frantic panic and her man put a firm hand on her shoulder, "What happened? Where are we? Did the rescue team show up?"
"Shh! Shhh, calm down" he cooed, "you're just fine, we're all fine. It's bumpy there for a minute, but we're ok now."
"But the plane! When did we get out? I don't remember! How did we get off of the mountain." She looked up at him frantically and his expression was a little worried. He handed the bundle to a nurse and went to her side quickly.
"Its ok babe, you made it." He looked worried, and that somehow calmed her. She was the source of his worry.
"But the plane crash" she said weakly, "Your legs... They're ok?" She stared at him in non comprehending disbelief and he smiled and kissed her softly, comfortingly on the cheek. He stood up and took the package back before returning to her. In his arms was a small babe still squealing from it's ordeal of entry.
"What are you talking about honey?" he asked, "We're fine. You made it, and she's here. It's a girl." Jessica still wasn't quite there.
"A... girl?" she asked quietly, "but what about the plane crash? How did we get off the mountain?" He shushed her and carefully pushed hair out of her face.
"What are you talking about?" he said again in that familiar, calming voice of his, "We're in the delivery room at St. Josephine's. Remember babe? We had some trouble getting here but we made it. We were scared for a second because you passed out and they thought you might have had a reaction to the epidural. You must have had one hell of a dream. I've never seen you so turned under, but look. She's finally here. She's here and that is all that matters babe. It's all over."
Jessica looked at the tiny, mewling bundle in Eric's arms and everything melted away.
"I think we should name her Maxine" he said quietly, and smiled broadly at the look in her eyes. "My God, Jessica, you're crying. I've never seen you do that before."
"I think this is one of those times when it is ok." Eric handed her the baby, and she held it and wept.
"Is this the peak?" she asked through her tears. Eric smiled down at her.
"No babe. This is only the foot hills. We've still a long way to go. Hey babe, Do you love?"
Private Flight 342 left the Los Angelos city Airport at 13:12 on Friday morning. A distress communication was received one hour and twenty five minutes later. After a two week search the wreckage was found of the plane. Inside, the bodies of the flight crew, and one passenger was found. All apparently died on impact, but the wounds of Eric Meltzin had been neatly bandaged and cleaned. Coroners reported that the body was post mortem when the aid was applied.
Jessica Landsdale was found twenty five miles from the crash site in the center of a plateau. Cause of death is filed as total organ failure due to deep tissue frost damage or exposure, though other injuries were present. She was discovered with a pack containing a block of fire starter, a can of preserved soup (consumed, autopsy confirms last meal), and an empty canteen. In addition to severe exposure, she possessed multiple fractures in her lower legs, and carpel regions most likely due to pressure applied after the bones had begun to freeze, and a severely broken nose as well as broken teeth. In spite of all this, the look on her face was described as serene, or happy. One rescuer reported she was the happiest girl he had ever found in such condition. She was laying on her back gripping a bundled up blanket to her breast and staring towards the sky. Her trek took her twenty five miles from the crash site, continuously upwards through constant snows and low single digit to sub zero temperatures.
Nobody knows why she left the plane.