Neve had taken up mountain climbing in her last two years at college. When she first got home that summer, she told her mom she wanted to try out the cliffs. Maeva had a shiver run through her when she heard her daughter’s words. She had walked the shore and the bottom of those cliffs many times since Sky had gone. Always hoping to find a trace of him, a clue, an answer to all her questions. But she saw and found nothing. Long time ago, Maeva did try to climb the cliffs in many places and, as much as she could have, staying safe for taking care of Neve had always stopped her from being too much of a risk-taker.
 
Neve saw her mother’s face freeze when she announced her intentions. At twenty-five, she felt she knew how to evaluate the walls, and she had climbed more dangerous rock walls before without difficulty. Her mother always thought the cliffs caused her dad’s death. Or disappearance. But, considering that twenty-three years had passed without a word from him, Neve considered him dead. She understood how difficult it was for her mom. She never obtained closure. She held all the rumors and stories she received when she investigated his disappearance. She never obtained an ounce of evidence towards either outcome. Sadly, Neve didn’t think she would find anything either, but even if she didn’t admit it, she did have the intention of looking around. She knew erosion had continued and found out that there was a bit of a landslide on the southwestern side. It was unlikely she would find anything. The sea would have gobbled it up like it did everything else.
 
Neve had all her equipment read. She did a good check on everything. She was walking along the rocky embankment. She had never seen the rocks pointing out of the water from this view. There looked threatening. No living thing would survive falling on them. They would probably be ripped apart by the cutting sharp points and the force of the waves breaking up on them. She looked up. She couldn’t believe how impressive the cliffs were. Still, she could easily see where she would place her anchor points.
 
Once she was ready, she started the climb. The first few meters were easy. No need for anchors yet. At one point, she evaluated that she was at about 5 meters high, the wall was completely vertical. It even closed over the 90 degrees angle at 100 meters. She looked all around, saw a good anchoring spot on the side where there seemed to be an enclave. She lifted her body with her right hand and searched for a good ledge where she could settle her right foot. That enabled her to see she almost reached a ledge on the left. Lifting herself up again she inserted another anchor. It was holding well. She lifted herself on a flat ledge of one meter large and half a meter long. Before she rested, she inserted another anchor higher on top of her head. She fastened it, pulled, it held. She now felt safe enough to take a rest. The view was spectacular. She felt on top of the world. Looking below, the rocks were dark and scary. It contrasted with the water’s color that was a calming transparent turquoise blue. The further you looked towards the horizon, the progressively darker it got, until it blended with the sky which, in turn, became lighter when she looked at it directly on top of her. Not a cloud in the sky. A rarity in this part of the world. She pulled herself up by using the rope and pulling at the anchor, making sure it would hold. The anchor moved slightly and something fell out of it. She pulled herself up carefully afraid that it would let go this time. It didn’t. She looked up, evaluating what was left and then remembered; something had fallen. At first, she only saw some dirt and little elongated pebbles. She decided to kneel back down and search thoroughly. The bottom of that large flat rock had some tiny crevasses like little mice caves. She looked at the thin long stones. Brushed off the dirt as much as she could. The color was lighter once they were cleaned. They were three of different sizes. She hesitated but thought she should insert her hand deeper into the hole. A huge wolf spider came out. Her recoil was instantaneous. As the spider just chittered away, she saw there was more fright than harm and went back into the hole. She felt other smaller long rocks and a round object. Not all the small pieces followed her hand, but the round thing did.  Still thinking of a way to get all the pieces out, without pushing them in further, she didn’t look at the object right away. Round pebbles were aplenty here. She did have extra carabineers in her pocket. She fished in her pocket to retrieve one and dropped the rocks in, at the same time. She went back in the hole, but the pieces were too far back. She put the first ones in her pocket, pulled on her anchor again and started the last climb of the day.
 
‘That part was easy’, she thought while rubbing her hands on her leggings. Last thing she did was insert a stick in the ground to wrap the end of her cord there. She would try to descend with a better tool to retrieve the other pieces. She walked along the cliffs towards the beach where her mom was when she arrived, but she was nowhere to be seem. What a bummer, she thought. She really hoped to get a ride to the house. She started walking but decided to take the longer path as it had more shade. She took out one of the rocks and was softly trying to brush the dirt off it. One was long with a bulbous tip on the end and a cracked edge on the other. The dirt came off easily. She frowned when she saw the gray of the dirt being replaced by a light beige color. Could it be a bone? she thought. She examined the rounded tip, and the other tip, quite ragged and sharp. Then, a thought passed through her mind. Could it be? And she went in her pocket looking for the other rocks. She looked for a place to sit and found an old log. She looked at the round pebble. Now that she had a suspicion about what the pebble was, she tried to take the dirt out of the middle first. It felt like hard rock. She had her pocketknife. She took her backpack off and dug into the side pocket. Found the knife. She slowly scratched at the dirt. Some crumbled away. But this process was too slow, and she didn’t want to damage whatever that round thing was. She put everything back in her pocket and continued home at a faster pace.
 
Her mom wasn’t anywhere to be found. Yvonne said she was probably in the office. Yvonne was slowly losing it, Neve thought. My mom hasn’t been up there in forever. Back in her room, Neve placed all the stones in a glass of water on her side table. She laid down to wait for the water to dislodge the dirt and, fell asleep observing it.
 
At three o’clock, the room was dark but for a sliver of light where the moonlight found a way to slice through the darkness. The ray of light hit the water in the glass. You could see a shiny golden color peaking through the debris on the circular object. The water had dissolved enough for the layers in the middle to dissolve and for an inside area of the gold to show.
 
The letter “S” could clearly be seen engraved in the metal.
 
                                                                 The END