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Stairway to the Final Rest

12/26/2015

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About fifty feet from the bottom of this, the last test of their ability and courage before the brief respite provided by the miles-long trek to the river, Gypsum looked carefully at the rock face below him. Steps! Shallow, irregular, rough, but steps nonetheless.
Gypsum did not believe it for a second. After seeing the soft rock that betrayed the piton and the treacherous knob on the other side, he would not trust anything inviting that this fang of rock might present.
So when he tested the first rough step, at first cautiously and then with more weight, he fully expected it to break away. It did not. Even when he put his entire weight on it, while holding tightly to the rope secured by a piton and his brother, the rugged step held fast. As did the next one. He looked closely at the descent. The next twenty feet were presented with the convenient stairway.
Gypsum warned his brother to keep him secure. They would coordinate their descents. Gypsum never once trusted all his weight to any of the convenient notches in the rock without having a secure hold on the anchored rope. So he did not plunge thirty feet to a crippling landing or death when the step he stood on suddenly collapsed and all those below it smoothed into featureless bone-colored stone.
He scrambled and grabbed with his left hand at a jagged handhold that had been there only a second before—but was there no longer. He fell only a foot or two before spinning a short way from the rock face on the end of the secured line.
After regaining his stability Gypsum viciously drove two pitons about three feet apart and six feet laterally from the vanishing stairway. The spire seemed to shake a little, in frustration or resignation. The brothers made their way down the last forty feet without incident or difficulty, but with plenty of caution.
Then they rested, moved a hundred yards away from the rocky range, and made camp just as darkness took over the sky.
 
 

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A tiny addition

12/20/2015

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I am sorry for the lack of new entries.  My wife has been in a hospital in Colorado while I'm in Wisconsin. Plus I've been working well over forty hours each week since Thanksgiving.  However, I added a paragraph of detail to the November first post.  It's just a little extra, and it's in italics so you can find it easily.  I should be able to get back to more regular contributions after Christmas.
Thanks again for reading.

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It Has Its Ups and Downs

12/6/2015

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The brothers gained the top of the fang-like spire and paused to collect their breathes, exchange mutual congratulations on the job done so far, and plan their descent.
To suggest that the spire was planning how to kill them might be overstating its level of sentience...but maybe not.
Most of its victims were claimed on the downward half of their attempt. 
The twins could see the accumulations of bodies at this side of the bottom of the pinnacle, so they knew they could not relax their caution.
As Feldspar had led the way up, so would Gypsum lead the way down, and both would be alert for the treachery they knew to be possible. They were helped by the impatience of the rock itself.  Even as the first piton was driven, while Gypsum was still supported by the rope secured to his brother, who straddled the point of the pinnacle in a safe and stable position, the rock went soft. The pion sagged and almost fell out completely. Gypsum laughed and shook his head in amused surprise.  Then he asked Feldspar to give him more rope.  He dropped abruptly about ten feet and drove another piton deep into the spire. The rock held firm.  The rope was threaded through the head and secured. A cautionary tug on the rope reassured him that the rock would not reject the metal and he glided down the rock face to a secure foothold several feet down. He signaled Feldspar and the older brother cautiously began his own descent.  On the way down he paused to check the spot that had rejected his brother's piton.  It seemed as hard and immutable as the rest of the rock.  He shrugged and continued to follow Gypsum down the rock face.
More surprises were still to come.     


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    The story: This serial is about the "mascot" shown at the top of these pages. There are actually two of them, identical twins, Feldspar and Gypsum.
    The people call themselves Riotori, and their planet is Kylrock. The twins have been journeying for hundreds of miles, across many hazards, in search of mates. Please visit the archives to read their whole story.



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