Alethea has always been awkward - eccentric, even. On a typical day she spends her time cloistered inside a tiny apartment hiding from the world she doesn't really understand. When her therapist encourages her to push herself outside her comfort zon...
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By the time we made it to Roran's other hideout I was practically dead on my feet. We had been lucky not to run across any other monsters, or perhaps they were just avoiding him after he slaughtered untold numbers of goblins. Either way it was a good thing, because as exhausted as I was he would have had to do all the fighting.
"Okay, so it's just a little bit farther," Roran said, lifting the torch he had made and pointing in front of us.
I blinked, wondering if I had fallen asleep standing up or if he had gone crazy. "Roran....uhm that's a wall," I began, staring at the stone in front of us and wondering if I was missing something. "I don't know about you but I've yet to acquire the ability to walk through solid objects."
He smiled at me and pointed straight up. "It's up there, Thea."
I squinted into the darkness and turned my head toward the direction he was pointing.
"And how are we getting up there? I'm assuming there's a ladder or something?" I asked, feeling stupid when he laughed at me.
"We get up there like this," he said, scaling the wall like an expert mountain climber.
Now it was my turn to laugh. "What, in the short time that you've known me, has led you to believe I'm capable of something like that?"
"Oh, come on. It's easy," he coaxed. "It's only around twenty feet."
"Oh really? Only twenty feet?" I quipped sarcastically. "Well, why didn't you say so? I'll just hop right up there."
He rolled his eyes and hung from the wall with one hand. I glared at him. Show-off.
"You don't really have a choice. It's the only way to get there, Thea."
I had to fight really hard not to stomp my feet and whine like a three year old. I was tired. And incredibly uncoordinated. There was a really, really high probability that I would fall to my death.
"Fine," I eventually grated out through clenched teeth. "But if I fall and die I will find a way to come back and haunt you for the rest of eternity. I swear."
He merely smirked at my threat and turned around to continue climbing. I made faces at his back in an attempt to make myself feel better.
"I know it's hard for you to see in the dark, so place your hands and feet where I do," he called down to me.
Taking a deep breath, I did as he instructed and heaved myself up the wall behind him. As soon as my feet were off the ground my heart began to race. Heights were not my thing. In fact it was near the top of the 'things I'm most afraid of' list. The list was pretty long – and by pretty long I mean infinite.
It took about ten minutes to climb the wall, and although it was ten minutes of mind-numbing terror, I fared better than I had originally thought.
"See?" Roran praised as I finally dragged myself over the ledge of the cave. "You did fine."
