Page 78 of Raelia

“Hang on, Pip, I’m coming,” Alex called out, deciding then and there that she would never again promise anyone anything in the heat of the moment.

Once her backpack was secured, she wrapped her legs around the rope and dropped over the edge, pulling herself along swiftly.

Don’t look down. Just don’t look down, she chanted to herself with each swaying pull across the rope.

When Alex approached the halfway mark, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Her head was directly behind Pipsqueak’s feet, which made having a conversation difficult, but she had to try.

“Pip?”

The other girl didn’t answer, so Alex unlocked one of her hands and reached out to touch Pipsqueak’s trembling leg.

“Pip!” Alex said, much louder this time, and she squeezed her classmate’s leg for emphasis. “We need to move!”

Like a whisper in the wind, Pipsqueak’s words came to her. “So high. We’reso high.”

“PhillipaSqueaker!” Alex all but screamed. “Snap out of it!”

Pipsqueak continued to babble about the height and Alex realised her words were having no effect whatsoever on her classmate’s frozen state.

She had to find a way to calm Pipsqueak. If she were calmer, then she might be able to start moving again.

Alex hadn’t spent much time inspecting her emergency medical kit, but she’d heard one of the others scoffing about a fast-acting relaxant. That sounded exactly like what Pip needed. The only problem was that Alex had no idea how to get the kit out of her backpack.

“Just keep holding on, Pip,” she said, realising what she had to do. “We’ll get you out of here in a minute. I promised, remember?”

Fuelled by her own determined words, Alex made sure her legs were secured as tightly as possible, took a fortifying breath and released her hands until she was dangling upside down in mid-air. She ignored the startled yells from her classmates and focused on retrieving the medicine as fast as possible.

Releasing one strap first and then the other, she craned her neck as she lifted the bag to unzip the main pocket and glanced inside. Being upside-down was disorienting, but she managed to reach a hand in and feel around until she found the medical kit.

A strong gust of wind caught her off-guard and for one terrifying moment she swung uncontrollably. Her legs were almost cramping with the effort of staying attached to the rope. Once she settled again, she wrapped the strap of the backpack around one arm and opened the medical kit, finding the small spray bottle she needed. She clenched it between her teeth and threw everything else into the bag before manoeuvring—quite impressively, in her opinion—the pack onto her back. Muscles screaming, she pulled herself up to grasp the rope again.

After taking a moment to ease her heavy breathing, Alex let go with one hand to retrieve the medicine from her mouth so she could check the instructions. Somehow she had to spray it directly into Pip’s face so that the other girl inhaled the contents, and the effect would be instantaneous.

“You so owe me for this, Pip,” Alex muttered, placing the medicine between her teeth once more.

She crawled as close to Pipsqueak as possible before she unlocked her legs and let them drop beneath her. It was a precarious position, but the only way she could get to Pip’s face was by moving over to her other side.

“Just keep holding on,” Alex encouraged around the spray bottle in her mouth.

She awkwardly reached around Pip’s body with one arm to grip the rope in the small gap between the other girl’s limbs. The new position was almost impossible to hold, and Alex had to hastily swing through the air when she felt her grip slipping.

She released a trembling breath as soon as she was on the other side of Pip and wasted no time in pulling her legs up to lock her body securely around the rope again.

“Time for you to wake up now,” Alex gritted out, after taking the medicine from her mouth again.

Pip’s protective body-cocoon meant that her head was tilted away from Alex, but it was easy enough to move the bottle into position and spray the fine mist into her face.

Just like the label said, the effect was instantaneous, but Alex hadn’t taken into account the full extent of what ‘sudden relaxation’ actually meant.

“NO!” Alex screamed when Pip’s limbs loosened their grip entirely.

Never before had Alex been so grateful for her well-honed reflexes. With barely a split second to react, she let go of the spray bottle and released her other hand from the rope toreach out and catch Pipsqueak, who had dropped like a dead weight.

“Oh, hey!” Pipsqueak said happily. Her eyes were glazed as she looked up at Alex who was once again dangling upside-down and straining to keep them both from plummeting into the crevasse. Only her steel grip on Pipsqueak’s forearms kept the other girl from falling. But the strength required to hold the both of them in the air was taking its toll on Alex and she knew she wouldn’t last long if Pip didn’t help.

“Pip, you need to snap out of it!” Alex said desperately.

“Are we flying, Alex?” Pipsqueak asked, with a dazed smile on her face. “This is fun. We should’ve listened to Skyla and made wings. Then we could fly all the time.”

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