She squeezed sideways through the fissure. Her body was blocking the glow of the lantern, but by the faint gleam streaming past her body she could see the rocks ahead. Light flickering on crags. Theodore was grunting behind her.
“Clara,” Theodore called.
She sucked in her belly, squeezing through some crags.
“I don’t fit,” Theodore called.
Ducking her head to squeeze past a crag, she felt her hat lift off her head, the brim wedged between some rocks above her, and she hesitated, considering attempting to maneuver around to grab her hat before continuing, but the fissure was too narrow to swivel her head, and she puckered her lips to blow some strands of hair out of her eyes, deciding to get her hat later.
“I can’t follow you any further,” Theodore called.
Contorting her shoulders to squeeze her body under a crag, she felt her shirt rip as a sleeve snagged on a rock, and she grimaced.
“Clara,” Theodore called.
“I’ll be alright,” Clara said.
Wrenching her hips to squeeze her body over a crag, she felt a sleeve rip again as a rock snagged her shirt, and she cursed.
“Clara,” Theodore called.
“I’ll be fine,” Clara said.
She could feel a drop of sweat trickling down her back.
“Almost there,” Clara called.
Her boots slipped on a crag. She became aware that her heart was pounding. She was so close that when she stretched out her hand she could almost touch the rocks at the rim of the fissure, and she pressed her body ahead toward the darkness, but then suddenly she was stuck, jammed between the walls of a jagged tapering gap with her face pinned against a crag and her boots dangling in the air, helplessly kicking above the ground.
“I might be stuck,” Clara called, feeling a rising panic, struggling to move, grappling for purchase, gripping a crag ahead of her, grasping a crag just behind her, pulling from ahead and pushing from behind and trying to thrust her body forward, desperately straining her legs in an attempt to touch her toes to the ground, breathing with her nostrils flared, whimpering with fear, and she wriggled her body again, thrusting, and then with a sense of relief she felt her body slide through the gap, and she lurched from the fissure into the darkness beyond.
Instead of stepping down onto rock, she dropped into a pit.