The roadcut was more challenging than River had expected, nearly vertical with fewer holds the higher she went. Pausing to think about where she was going next, River considered two paths, one angling to the right and one nearly straight up to the top. The straight to the top route would be quicker, but River wasn’t looking for quick. She wanted to feel the strain in her arms and shoulders, to tax her back, thighs, and calves.

They had a long day of filming ahead of them, and River refused to cheat herself out of a moment of relaxation now.

A tiny breath of surprise escaped her lips as River’s hand slipped. For a moment, she hung there, two stories off the ground, by the fingertips of her left hand. Years ago, it would have scared her, but today, she simply enjoyed the stretch on her arm, loosening the tension in her shoulders as she dangled. Then River hauled herself upward with the strength of her bicep, her free hand and toes finding purchase in the rock. Resting her weight on her toes took the strain off her arms as she peered up. The top of the rock face was within sight, but the holds were harder to find, and the next one would require a dyno to reach.

“Sorry, Jessie.” She inhaled a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I know you would have loved to film this. But I’m allowed a me moment.”

Then she let go and jumped.

The first time River had tried a dynamic move, she’d landed flat on her butt. Now, they were her favorite. There was a moment during a dyno, when a climber let go of the safety of their hold, trusting that the momentum of their jump would take them to the next hold beyond their reach. To dyno was to trust oneself. Otherwise, flying became falling. River had learned young that when you fall off a horse, get right back on. A rock was no different, even if the fall hurt worse.

“Gotcha,” she breathed, fingers finding their grip, legs dangling. Her right foot found a second grip parallel to her shoulder, her left hand crossed over her head to a hold above her right shoulder.

Okay, maybe it was more like yoga than River wanted to admit.

A few more feet and River hoisted herself over the top of the roadcut, where a natural shelf cut horizontal into the mountain. The result was the perfect ledge for her to stand on, one arm looped around a pine tree growing at an angle out of the cliffside. On a branch somewhere behind her, a pair of songbirds chirped and flirted with each other, ignoring the crunching of the red squirrel eating pine seeds a few trees away. She swore she could smell the distant ocean on the breeze.