Time

She awoke and found herself laying in a shallow pool of warm water. A great noise clouded her ears, and when she sat up to determine its source she saw thousands of gallons of water falling into a deeper end of the pool from in front of a slick wall of rock. Her eyes trailed up, trying to follow the waterfall to its source, but its spray had produced such a thick mist that she could see no farther than a few feet from her, and both the fall and the stony cliff quickly disappeared from view. She felt a deep curiosity as to what lay beyond the fog, but looked down instead, and the face of a young girl stared back up at her from the surface of the water. The desire to see where the water came from re-emerged in her mind, and as her gaze returned to the fall she could see a portion of the cliff side that looked safe to climb. 

She treaded over to the wall and pulled herself up, slowly climbing farther and farther away from the shallow pool. The rocks glistened, wet from the spray of the waterfall, and the girl slipped more than once, catching herself on an outcropping stone before she fell too far. On and on she climbed, her curiosity ever growing stronger. 

No matter how far she crawled up from the pool, there seemed to be no end in sight. But she began to slip less and less the higher up she went. Her grip upon the rock became firmer, and she found herself rising faster as the climb progressed. 

On she climbed, determined to find the source of the waterfall. But the ascent was long and difficult, and she began to feel weary. Now, as she neared exhaustion, questioning whether her efforts were worth whatever she might find, she could see that the fog began to thin around her. Squinting up at a pale blue sky, she could just make out the cliff top, from which water still gushed down past her. She mustered what little strength she had left and made her way up, almost collapsing from exhaustion.

She clambered over the top and rolled onto her back, panting. When she regained her breath and looked around, she found nothing around her but another shallow pool. All that effort, it seemed, was for nothing. She peered into it and saw that her youth had disappeared; a lined, weary face with long white hair looked solemnly back up at her. The old woman hobbled back over to the edge of the cliff, her bones stiff and weak from the long and perilous climb. Looking down, she was astonished to find that she could see the pool of water at the bottom, much closer than she had thought it had been. 

The movement of a small shape on the face of the cliff caught her eye. It was a little boy, struggling to climb up the wall, unable to see what awaited him at the top yet eagerly clambering on. The woman shouted desperately, urging the boy to stop, to turn back. There’s nothing up here!, she yelled, but her voice quickly grew hoarse. The roar of the waterfall washed away the sound of her pleading screams.