I spent the last of my savings on flinging myself into South America’s wilderness. The world was ending anyway. I thought that I should see it before it was gone. She told me that the country would still be a pretty place without her.
I pinched the brim of my baseball cap and looked up the stairway to the temple’s altar. It was hard to believe that I stood in front of one of the buildings photographed in her books. The pictures made them look indestructible, like the stone blocks that formed the stair-step sides of the pyramids were caulked with magic. Nothing should have been able to destroy those.
The temple crumbled under the crimson glow of the sun. Its majesty had melted away. Vines reached up the rock in desperation, like browning, parched fingers. Even the jungle plants couldn’t survive much longer in that heat.
The wild trees leaned close to the shrine; the ferns brushed their scorched leaves against my back. Sweat rolled down my bare chest as I stepped out of the undergrowth and climbed the temple side. The thump of my footfalls marked my ascent like a drumbeat and my heart joined it in a fierce harmony.
