Blackbird

Chapter 13

"Come on Emilya!" Ilva sighs impatiently, outside my door.

"Hang on!" I call, fumbling for my backpack.

"We have to go outside sometime you know", Ilva sarcastically reminds me.

I open the door.

"I'm ready now", I say, "Shall we go?"

As Ilva promised, she's taking me to an activity day (just me and her, which I'm slightly worried about) and she looks very exited about it. This is a bad sign.

We tread silently out of the treehouse and, as usual, it fades out of existence.

Ipva turns to me, suddenly serious, "To do some of these activities, you're going to have to trust me. Can you do that?"

I grimace. I'll have to start eventually.
"Yes."

She grins at me, "How good are you at climbing?"

Several minutes later :)

"Ilva, I swear to God, if you drop me I will kill you!" I start to panic at the glorious view of sharp, unforgiving granite rocks beneath us.

Ilva has climbed up the cliff face with ease without a harness, and she's got me climbing up a rope too, with her at the top to support me. Right now this doesn't seem very comforting.

The rope drops slightly and I shriek, clinging to the frayed rope.

"Honestly Emilya, I've got you!" Ilva calls from above. Her voice sounds more like God from the heaven. Good. I want to die.

"Can I remind you once again that I'm scared of heights!?" I call up, my voice catching slightly.

"Can I remind you once again that you should be trusting me?" Was Ilva's only answer.

I shuffle up the rope, trying not to think about how I could simply let go and doom myself forever. Only a few more feet....

Ilva sees the top of my head and smiles, "Now we're going to make this trickier!"

"Don't. You. Dare", I spit out, using my concentration to haul myself up.

She ignores me.

"How about I hang off this cliff by my hands and you have to grab hold of my legs and pull yourself up?" Ilva suggests, thoughtfully. She ties her crimson ringlets in a bun on her head and moves into a swift backflip, ending in her grabbing hold of the edge of the cliff.

We were both going to die.

I squeak, as the rope that Ilva was recently holding began pooling down to the ground. I jumped at Ilva's legs and held on.

"Not so tight, Emilya, you're cutting off my circulation", Ilva grumbles.

I didn't listen to her, but managed to climb up so I had my hands on the edge of the cliff.

I pushed myself us and collapsed.

When I came back to my senses, Ilva was back on the cliff too.

"That's activity number one crossed off", she smiled at me.

"There's more?" I panted, gasping for air.