Descending Star

FREERIDER

The last minutes demanded solemnity. The rangers knew it and, having completed their obligatory advisories and well-wishes, silently departed. Zoey stood at the gentle concavity of the base, the first pitch of the road that she had studied, memorized, and dreamt of, ever since the age of eleven, before the route had been free soloed by any living soul. She idly counted the last seconds down in her head as she bent and brushed stray grit off the sticky soles of her shoes. She straightened upright, to her five-four stature, slowly exhaled, and put two hands on the cold, charcoal gray stone.

"Three, two, one," she whispered. And then, "Happy birthday."

Under the pale soft light of the moon, the gentle ripples in the smooth granite, fine and subtle as dry brush strokes on plaster, greeted Zoey like old friends. The uninitiated would have felt only the smooth surface of glass, with nothing for purchase, but Zoey felt the planet's pulse through her bones. The Wall sang with a ponderous cadence, transmitted through bedrock from the earth's core, which she felt with the whorls of her fingers and the lines on her palms. Her hands fit and conjoined with the stone, interlocked with the certitude of muscle memory, and a radiant smile blossomed upon her face, seen only by the Wall. In the brisk air, under deepest night, she no longer felt cold. She raised a slender leg, turned her knee and ankle to smear her toe and heel against the granite, raised both hands along the planet's bare veins, took her remaining foot off the earth, and majestic El Capitan, her long lost lover, welcomed her home.

Zoey straddled the rigid, unyielding face, bore down with her heels, pressed her breast to the Wall's heartbeat, drove herself upward, pulled herself reluctantly off the granite hardness, reared her spine into an exultant arch, slammed herself back down upon her heels and haunches to grind against the vast coldness of its embrace. Her slender fingers wrapped themselves around the granite's pulse, clung to its straining muscle, strained for its perspiring brow, pressed upon its rigid skin, raised her calves in open welcome to its obdurate immensity, drove herself down upon it again, tirelessly, insatiable, every muscle vibrant with delicious agony, a thrilling burn deep within her bones, and up she climbed with an insistence that drove the Wall to take her, cast her onto her back, to cover her, clutch her by her breast and neck, put itself upon her body, crush her under its body, enfold and grip and encage her body; the Wall took her with its unassailable power, sought to dominate and subjugate pliant, accepting flesh that incandesced to flame, and then the Wall took her in its limbs, spun her in circles, gripped her in the air, hard and cold as cast bronze against her crotch, relented its grip on her throat, granted her delicious gulps of cold luxuriant air, and in the humid aura between them she pressed her lips and mouth to its granite immensity, breathlessly curled her fingers into its locks, wrapped her calloused fingers around its shoulders, gripped its broad clavicles with her digging thumbs, wrapped her arms around its neck, grasped the deep steel cords of its ribs and musculature, laughed with breathless euphoria on the godlike body of her lover, and awash in ecstasy, she exhorted it to redoubled effort upon her, implored it to take and possess her to her innermost depths, commanded it to complete its possession of her body and soul as it rolled itself onto its back and freed her limbs, to be ridden by her once again. Zoey Martine felt light and warm as nightsong, utterly blissfully free, at one with her lover, conjoined and inseparable. She slipped three fingers deep into its mouth and held on by her teeth to crane her neck upward to its vastness in the sky and downward to its roots far below their mated loins, and for the first time since giving herself over to the Wall in abandon, she looked down upon the treeline, down to the dark and distant tops of the trees far below, shrouded in mist. She laughed with breathless glee and thought to herself, with the certitude of a woman's knowledge of her lover, that three hundred twenty feet remained to this road's convex slabbed crux, the broad smooth chest of the mountain's encasements around its heart, smooth and flawless as the concrete surface of the Cactus Garden at her high school back home, and she thought to herself, that was where her lover rejected nine out of ten aspirants who deigned to impose their unwelcome embrace, but not me, she said with breathless desire, not me today, she said with hunger, not on my birthday, she said with a sultry laugh, not on this day that I've awaited for my lifetime, not on this morning of our union. She smiled with euphoria, lips to the granite visage of her immense and indefatigable beloved, and she threw an arm into the air, in search of the next hold.