Four hours. That’s all the time I had to get to where it was. Climbing every rock like it would be my last, time begins to slip as my confidence rises. But soon my palms begin to sweat, and the secure feeling I had before turned into fear. I slipped. I fell. I got back up and cleaned the dirt off my body.

Three hours. I still had some time. I begin to climb the rocks again, getting farther than I did before. Keeping my breathing as steady as I could, I moved my hands with the rhythm of the earth. Every bird that chirped, every leaf that fell to the ground, my hands would be climbing along with it. I stop to take a break and look up at the sky. Taking a sharp breath in, I see that it is now red. It’s happening faster than I thought. I quicken my pace up the mountain. 

Two hours. I sigh and start moving again. Blisters start to form on my hands and I wince with every touch. I feel defeated for some reason. Even though I’m still climbing towards it, I feel like I have lost. I don’t remember why I’m getting it in the first place; why I wanted and needed it so bad. But I shake off the feeling and continue up the mountain, watching rocks crumble around me with force. 

One hour. I’m so close. Just a couple feet and I’ll be there. Everything that has led up to this moment doesn’t matter anymore. The second-guessing, the blisters, the exhaustion, the fall. All of it will be forgotten the second that I finally get to see it again. 

Thirty minutes. I’m here. The sun blinds my eyes, but I laugh instead of looking away. Lifting my body to the surface, I smile at the bright green grass that I had missed so dearly. The air is different up here. Cleaner; fresher. I remember it being just like this. 

Ten minutes. Here it is. I smile as I pick its stem from the moist ground. Taking a deep breath as I stand back up, I stare at it in awe. I can’t believe it’s still here after all these years; after all that has happened to this earth since I planted it thirty years ago. I was only fourteen years old at the time, but I knew what the world would come to. I planted a lily on top of this mountain as a token of my appreciation for the place I had once loved and would soon learn to hate. Not the world itself, but it’s inhabitants. 

I caress the lily’s smooth petals and begin to cry. I wish it was like this down below, where the sun is too weak to reach and the air is too foggy to breathe. 

My watch beeps and buzzes as the mountain below me starts to crack. The time has come. The earth is dying. Everything left will soon be gone: the beautiful green grass, the clean air, the mountain, the blazing hot sun, and all the humans that ruined it. They would rather replace nutritious food with chemical garbage, lush forests with new office buildings, clean water with a plastic wasteland. I wish they took the time to care about something other than themselves for once.

I take one last look at the world as tears stream down my face. Then I close my eyes and brace myself, squeezing the flower to my chest as tight as I can. I slip. I fall. Everything goes black. I can die in peace knowing that I took my last breath holding my lily. If only everyone else could have done the same.