Fearwall

This wall was immense.
A cathedral of solid, ruthless rock was towering against the dark skies above. The cold granite felt rough and hostile against his palms, as he crawled and stumbled his way upwards along the narrow path.
Below him there must have been a drop of more than twenty thousand feet, and as he carefully tilted his head back to get a glimpse of the summit, he was sure he was facing at least another ten thousand - most of them eighty-five-plus degrees of uncompromising godmade fear.
He'd seen pictures of the northwest face of the Great Trango Tower in Pakistan back in the days when he had been overwhelmed by this sudden and irrational urge to deepen his understanding of his own, quite serious case of vertigo, mostly by exposing himself to literature and films on the subject of vertical living.
But this wall was serious in comparison to those pictures.
In addition to the height, its width made it seem endless in both directions.
And it was here that he suddenly found himself, working his way up some narrow man-made path in an area where the steepness of the wall was less ridiculous.
He climbed further, over what he decided was a fairly clumsy attempt at creating some kind of steps in the stone, probably hammered out by some ancient hand long ago, judging by the condition they were in now.
To his right an equally sorry effort at making some sort of security-fence had also been attempted - just as if a half-foot pile of small rocks would stop him from falling into the abyss, if he should be so unlucky as to stumble.
As he tried not to think of the possible consequences the tiniest misconduct of his freezing limbs would almost certainly lead to, he could hear sounds echoing out of the misty stone world around him.
Ranging from the most delicate whispers to the odd shout-out of what sounded like orders, he gradually understood the situation. There were people working out there, working hard to overcome this impossible challenge of going for the summit.
He could just make out clusters of hopeful souls who had teamed-up, trying to secure eachother as they faced this inconceivable climb.
Some of them must have been trying to ascend blindly as if they had no real understanding of how life-threatening this situation was.
Sleepwalking. Sleep-climbing. What’s the word?
Fools on the edge of their own destruction, closing in on defeat with every new move, he thought to himself.
Then he realised he was one of them.
Well, at least he wasn't out there, in the middle of the wall.
Even if this strange pathway gave but a small, but probably illusory sense of security, he decided he was safer than those poor bastards out there.
Whatever the reasons he had landed in this situation, he could feel the pull of some strong yet unidentifiable force up there. A kind of negative gravity dragging him from within.
This had to be overcome, even if he felt like an insect insisting upon finding nirvana in the ultraviolet light of a fly zapper.
Something truly important was up there. He knew this.
He accepted it as the only kind of excuse he needed.
A kind of hope.
Not belief, and not hope as in desperately hoping something to be true - where hope is the only thing to hold on to. But hope as in when you know you’re going to find what you’re looking for, if only you can get there.
Hope as engine – not goal.
Hope had many faces, he decided to himself, and continued his climb.
He had to get up there - or fall.
Then he woke up.

The sun cast its bright yellow rays through the room.
An impressive nebula of tiny particles of dust danced about in the air above him, like a weightless ballet company.
It was beautiful.
He filled his lungs with the chilly autumn air and blew a delicate stream of morning breath through his dry lips.
The dance changed, and the tiny dust performers elevated to spiral far above his head, and out of sight.
“It’s that simple”, he thought.
Vix - the choreographer of coincidence.

Be blessed, my child. For you are the joy and the pride of my creation. It is for you, and only you, that I can bear the pain and disappointment those who cannot see their task have inflicted upon me. It is for this love that I choose to keep all of this real. It is only because I see the gratitude and joy in your eyes - as you do what I cannot do myself - that I endure all this. Just for a moment you help me forget that I know it all, as I've made all of this real. Just for one moment, I can share your excitement.