Halfway
The ground was still smoking. So many were gone. Those once considered close were no more than memories now – ghosts that haunted her. She kept walking. She didn’t want to. She wanted to turn around and try, one more time, to work for common ground. But she knew it was fruitless, so she set her face toward the horizon and kept putting one foot in front of the other. Suddenly, it seemed, years had passed. She had found a refuge, a place to be until the pain subsided. In that refuge, she could forget and focus her attention on the tasks at hand. Curiosity had always been her most loyal companion, and she had let it guide her. She had worked through the training, and when she completed one level, she started another. She just wasn’t ready to integrate the past into her present quite yet. Now, halfway up the mountain, she was spent. The past wasn’t going to be silent any longer. She had been pretty successful at keeping her eyes focused on the present, not letting the niggl