LITMIR.BIZ

      – Honey, are you hungry? – asked Leah’s mother. She wasn’t asleep yet.

      – No, mom, I had a dinner with Pedro in the restaurant. Go to bed and don’t worry about me.

      She still had a strong headache. Leah rolled herself in a rug, took a cup of coffee and switched on her laptop. After reading tons of suggestions, contradictions, facts and confirmations Leah found one interesting science work of some professor about dreams control. When we are asleep, our brain starts managing the new information received during the day. If the information is considered to be invaluable, it’s deleted. All the other packs of information are allocated in different archive parts of a brain. When the old part of information meets the new one, a picture is played, then another one and another one. That’s the reason why we see dreams. If you want to control your dreams, you have to wake up in it. In other words, you can’t control your dreams until you realize yourself in it.

      Leah’s head was still aching. It felt like been pressed all over by some invisible hand. The girl put away her laptop and decided to relax. She laid back on the couch and turned on the TV. Her favorite channel about tourism and sport aired the show about the British expedition to Qomolangma in 1924. Several people were trying to climb the highest pique of the world.

      Chapter 2

      – Don’t fall asleep! Please, just don’t fall asleep. Don’t close your eyes, we’re close, get up.

      A sound of a slap.

      – Whose face? – asked her consciousness, and immediately gave the answer – yours.

      – Open your eyes.

      The same voice.

      Leah opened her eyes and closed them again. A man with a mask on his eyes, with a white beard looking like Santa Claus – that’s all she could see under the hood of the climber suit.

      Who are you? Where are the people from your expedition? Why did nobody help you and left here dying alone?

      Leah heard his endless questions, but she had no answers. The only thing she knew for sure at that moment was who she is.

      It was very cold. A strong wind blew. Her eyes felt it, but her cheeks already were senseless. The man tried to make her consciousness. But her consciousness was asleep – maybe because of the cold wind, maybe because she was indeed sleeping.

      “Am I really dreaming again? – thought Leah. – No, I haven’t had sun burns, I didn’t drown in the ocean – so I won’t freeze to death here! Here… Where is ‘here’? Where am I this time?” Leah heavily sat down. She couldn’t feel her body, she just shivered.

      – Get up, – screamed the man. He gave her an oxygen mask and told her to breathe. She suddenly felt a lack of an oxygen. It must have been hypoxia. Leah stood up on unruly legs. The man started pulling her by the hand. Last night he lost half of people from his expedition and almost freezed to death with the survivors. Those who were able to go on moved forward. Nobody is awaited in such a bad weather. Every man is for himself there.

      – We have to get in time. Avalanching is unpredictable. The wind has changed. The weather conditions are against us now. The strong wind piled up the entire mound of snow on the slopes. We have to get to our expedition camp before avalanching. The density f the new and the old snow can differ so that it can cause avalanche.

      The man murmured all the way.

      You have to remember one thing. If the avalanche happens, try to come out of the snow while falling. Don’t wait for it to stop. And close your face with a scarf immediately, the snow will enter the airways Otherwise you won’t survive.

      Leah obeyed. Legs were almost unruly, the fear laughed at her face.

      “What if I really die here? What if I’ll never come back home? Maybe I should better fall asleep and wake up at home before avalanche?” – Leah thought trying to overcome her fear.

      – Let me go, – she took away the man’s hand. – I have to sleep, I need a break.

      – Are you insane? – the man shouted.

      – Who are you? – asked Leah.

      It was the last thing she heard.

      A huge wave of a snow dust closed them both. Leah felt the man standing somewhere nearby for some time. He held her hand, pushed her up out of the snow. She remembered his instructions and tried to come up as close to surface as possible. Everything calmed down. There was an absolute silence.

      “I can still breathe, – thought the girl. – How deep under the snow am I?”

      She was hit by an unexplainable feeling of claustrophobia, panic, an urgent need to try to get out before the snow is not settled and became heavy. Her hands were trying to remove a layer of snow over her head. She had a success in some time. The teeth were chattering from the cold. She tried again. Her hand was suddenly the top, out of the snow. Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks.

      “It’s all right. I won’t die”, – Leah thought. But this thought didn’t bring her any power. She was short of breath, she couldn’t move her hand. She didn’t know how long she was sitting like that. Leah lost track of time. Minutes, hours or seconds… Time seemed to have stopped. The personal space and time seem to be the most narrow of the human existence. Meanwhile the personal space and time embrace the natural and social human existence like a microcosm. Those private personal space and time are the most valuable for everyone. They are the things that make the other forms of human existence either valuable or indifferent for a person’s individual development, just like Leah was at the moment, but with a full lost of personal time and a hopeless personal space.

      Somebody grabbed her hand and tried to dig her out. He’s alive! The man from that expedition is alive! She burst with happy tears.

      Leah, how are you? You’re alive! I arrived in time!

      He took her out, put an oxygen mask on her face, but it wasn’t that climber. It was a very familiar voice, no white beard, thin face and those black eyes.

      – Tien?! – Leah looked at him in a state of a shock.

      – I’ll explain everything later. Leah, stand up, we have no time. It’s just a small part of the snow came down from the lower ridge of the mountain.

      Nearly carrying the girl on his back, Tien reached the camp. Suddenly she lost all her strength. She had a half clouded consciousness. Leah did not hear Tien’s voice. He poured something tough into her mouth, and she had to swallow it. Then Tien started rubbing her hands with the same liquid. A strong wind almost carried the climbers tent away. Her eyes were closing. The girl was almost asleep.

      Tien began to unbutton her jacket. He pulled her sweater and pants and all the other clothes away. Then he put her in a sleeping bag and undressed himself. Leah watched him with half-closed eyes, rigid from cold, unable to say a word. He lay down near her, hugged her from behind and pulled her to his hot body. His breathing was regular as the clock and hot as the flames of the fireplace in her home. Leah closed her eyes feeling a huge relief after experiencing fear and embarrassment. She consoled herself with the thought that she won’t spend a long time in Tien’s arms. Soon she’ll wake up at home, in her comfortable warm bed. She also was frightened with the thought that it wasn’t the first time that she wakes up in another period with unfamiliar people and in extremely dangerous places.

      She woke up from the sounds of a strong wind and swaying tent fabric. She opened her eyes and saw the same black eyes. Tien was openly gazing at her naked shoulders. Leah pulled her hand out of the sleeping bag and swung to heat the bold Asian lying near her. But Tien caught her hand and took it away back to the sleeping bag.

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