“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Benediction, maybe.”

“Strange. You don’t even believe.”

“I don’t need belief for that.”

“You need God. And you don’t have that either.”

His legs were lead, his lungs two open wounds. The guide kept saying malapit na (near the summit!) but the words had worn thin a hundred steps ago, then a hundred more. Each promise was another betrayal, and he kept cashing them anyway. He raised his hand, mouthing five minutes, because words would not come. He felt half-dead. The sacred didn’t care.

“What if there really is a God? What will you say when you die?”

“I’ll look him in the eye and tell him I hope he’s happier now.”

“Happier?”

“He made all this because he was lonely. No one deserves to be alone. Not even him.”

Lights. Too many. White, enveloping. Like a curtain drawn too close to his eyes, searing and soft at once. For a moment he thought: heart attack. Stroke. This is how it ends. He lay there, the guide hovering, the driver pale, both asking if he was still with them. He wanted to laugh but couldn’t. All he managed was, “Water.”

The mountain didn’t blink. Neither did God.

The tomb waited behind thin cloth. Entering felt wrong. Photographing, worse. But he raised the curtain anyway, and the sun poured through the fabric, turning the white to something too bright, too thin. He stood there, heart filled with thunder. Wrongness pressed on his chest, so he prayed.

“I don’t know why I’m talking to you. You know where I stand. Still, thanks, I guess. Or sorry. For the silence. For… you know what, forget it. Just keep us safe while we’re here. Or don’t. You always were a bad listener.”

A pause. Uncertain and doubtful and yearning.