1 - The Slope [(2) 9/18/2008]

So i'd been working on this one for a long, long time and it kept getting longer and longer, with more backstory and more explanation and more time and days and excrutiating detail, when i finished writing SN 1006 a couple of hours ago, and i suddenly realized that i could explore this single moment which was the only part of the story that i'd wanted to tell, but had hidden under a big pile of excess crap because a part of me assumed my readers needed EVERYTHING, when, really, they don't. So i just spent an hour cutting away like seventy percent of the crap, and i'm actualy fairly pleased with what emerged. Like a marble statue: just cut away all the marble that doesn't look like an elephant, and you have an elephant. As it were.

"Wow," Emiko says breathlessly, skidding to a stop and spraying up a little fount of snow. "Are you okay? That was amazing."

I lay there for a moment, stunned. It's snowing, and a distant part of me watches the little flakes as they tumble carelessly from the deep grey sky and land on my goggles with a quiet little crunching noise. As the shock wears off I begin to take a stock of all outlying parts. Nothing feels broken. Arms appear fine. Left leg twisted at a weird angle where the ski is lying flat on the ground and carrying the attached foot with it. No such feeling in my right leg, which implies there's no ski there. I wonder how long I can just lie here, but even as I think that she leans over me with a concerned expression on her face. I sigh and sit up, and look forlornly down the slope. My right ski lays five feet down-slope from me, apparently refusing to be associated with the rest of us. I look wistfully over my shoulder where, far, far back up the mountain, I can see the top of the ski lift over a copse of trees. Turning back to face the downhill slope, I sigh inwardly. I've never really skied before – not since I was six years old – and I'm sure it's much worse in my head than it is in reality, but as far as I can tell it's a deathtrap: steep and bendy and endlessly long.

"I don't suppose we can go back up? Take the ski lift back down the mountain?"

She sighs, and offers me my poles. "I don't think so. I don't think it's allowed to go up the slope. It's sort of a one way road."

I take the poles and lay them down next to me, and begin the laborious process of scraping the snow out of the bottom of my shoe so that I can connect my foot back into the ski.

She glances cautiously down the slope, calculating how far we've progressed, how long it's taken, how much slope there is left. She frowns, and I know what she's thinking. I've done the calculations myself: at our current rate, with me falling down about once every fifty feet, we're going to take all afternoon just to finish this one slope. She'd had hopes of hitting as many slopes as possible today, our last day in Tahoe, and she'd spent all morning running me through green circles, the simplest of slopes, before her desire for something closer to her skill level had convinced her that I was ready for the next level in difficulty: a blue square. Though it dawned on me the first time I fell, still in plain view of the ski-lift exit, I can tell that it is just occurring to her what her impatience may have cost her.

As I finally manage to get the teeth in my ski boot to snap into ski's mouth, a couple suddenly appears around the bend in the track above us. They ski dangerously close to one another, but don't seem to care, laughing as they weave down the slope in unison, like choreographed snow pixies. As quickly as they'd come they disappear beneath us, vanishing in an upkicked wake of snow and ice. She looks wistfully down the slope after them, and I can see it on her face – the way she bites her lower lip, a look of almost-sadness in her eyes – her desire to be one of them, to feel speed and exhilaration and the wind in her face.

"Look," I say, getting unsteadily to my feet, "why don't you go and finish this run without me. At the rate I'm going you'll probably be able to get all the way down and back to me before I'm halfway down the mountain."

For a moment I can see her thinking about it, looking down the slope with an expression of longing. I can see the conflict within her written on her face; her desire to enjoy herself, and her desire for me to enjoy myself. It's an uncommon look for her, she who seems to always know so clearly what she wants, and I am suddenly surprised by it. She purses her lips in thought, and I am suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to kiss her, except that I'm too clumsy in my skis, and if I tried to move next to her I would probably fall over, and I have spent the last half hour looking foolish, and so I don't. After a second she comes to a decision. There is an almost imperceptible shake of her head, and then she turns to me, giving a smile that is both brittle and sincere.

"Don't worry about it, Scott," she says. "It's okay. I'm here. I'll stay with you."

And she does. As the descent continues, painfully slow in its stops and starts, as Wanty and Keith pass us, and then pass us again, through fall after fall after fall, she stays with me.

All the way down.