Running was not Jekily’s favorite activity, nor were they particularly good at it. While others in their class could cover ground tirelessly, with little more than a sheen upon their brow at the end, Jekily looked and sounded like a wounded moose by the end of any run more than a few yards. Running up the side of the mountain was tantamount to agreeing to torture oneself slowly and willingly.

Yet there Jekily was, on an overcast, damp, too cold for the end of spring morning, running up the mountain. In between labored breaths, or more accurately gasps, Jekily swore they might be mad. No one in town would have sworn differently had they been up on the mountain, too.

But no one else was, not now, not following the waterfall up to its beginning on some fool’s errand, quest, thing that Jekily couldn’t even be sure mattered. They’d awakened to weak light creating a glow around the sides of the curtains in their room and couldn’t shake the feeling to see where the waterfall began. Not any waterfall, although the mountain had more than could be counted on both hands, but the waterfall. The compulsion was an itch that wouldn’t go away.

So they ran. Not packing anything, barely remembering to throw on a waterproof shell as the mountain seemed to whisper, to pull with a strange force they’d never noticed before.

Some care where the waterfall ends… the wind sighed as even the morning bird calls were drown out by the rush of the water. Jekily shook their head.

“Wind doesn’t talk,” they muttered, it coming out in bursts on exhalations that looked like small clouds.

You should care where it begins…the trees whispered with a shake of their limbs.

Jekily tried to ignore the feeling that they were running against the clock up the mountain. They didn’t dare look up to see how much of the steep incline was left, pretended they didn’t hear the very earth grown and the water contort in ways that defied reality. Instead, they focused on the pain shooting up their calves and steadying their breath, pushing the drops of sweat from their eyes.

The waterfall’s beginning…that’s what had been whispered in the dream. That was what played like a jumbled up track in their head and that’s why Jekily, who hated running, now launched into a sprint up the mountainside to find what the waterfall’s beginning had to do with their end.