Come out to the mountain with me.
Where is the mountain?
Just beyond this tunnel
I don’t see a tunnel.
Follow me; keep your eyes straight ahead.

In the pitch dark, images moved like pieces of a ghost. The tunnel began to narrow in and press lightly against her shoulders as she walked forward. White shadows threatening to touch, brushed up against her face. Her feet squished in and out of a soft cold substance that collected in between her toes each step she took. She held one hand out ahead of herself though nothing was there to hold it back.

I’m here. Don't worry. Do you know why you’re special Ida?
Because I can find you?
Because you think you can find me.
Is there really a mountain?
Only if you see one when we get there.

Ida brought her hand close to her chest and held herself. She began to rub her shoulders but the tunnel walls scrapped against her knuckles until they held her still. She nudged herself forward but only managed an inch of a step. A pulse in the wind moved down the tunnel. The ground rumbled and became concrete, her feet imprinted into its hard mold. She told herself to ask him for help but she could not give up the words and something in her liked being held snug by the tunnel walls.

Is there really a mountain?
Follow me.
What will we do when we get there?
You’ll see me.

The tunnel squeezed her so tight her body folded under its pressure, her chest collapsed as she fell onto the hard substance. She stretched out her hand and grabbed at the air as the tunnel closed in above her. Movements like those of patient waves flowed where she thought he dwelt. Ida motioned her hand in the same manner of the waves, patient, flowing their rhythm until the walls sat on her chest like a gravestone. Her arms lay wide open. And as she felt the pressure of the tunnel walls caving into her chest she hugged them.

You don’t believe there’s a mountain, do you?

But Ida couldn’t hear him, he had been speaking from the end of the tunnel and she was in the middle of it, sleeping underneath its walls.