The crux of a rock-climb is the most difficult move or sequence of moves that a climber will have to make in order to complete the route; it is also the true name of a Constellation that shines at -60^o and is commonly known as the Southern Cross

As she awoke she heard the sound of the ocean, and then felt the tepid water that filled her boots and the rough sand against her knees and elbows. Lacing sandy fingers across her face she carefully opened her eyes to brilliant sunshine. The first thing was that she was on a beach of incredibly white sand, turquoise water lapping at her legs and a warm breeze lifting the long sun-bleached hair from her face. The second thing was that the pain had gone. 

Now she sat up, pulled her legs from the tiny waves, and looked around. The beach was small and empty. There was nothing, no drift-wood, no rocks and no trees; nothing but sand, a tooth achingly blue sea and a huge cliff. The beach was hemmed in at either end by the biggest wall of rock that she’d ever seen, a huge golden rush of granite, racing skywards until it dropped out of sight. And as her eyes dropped back to the sand she saw her feet and a big old grin whispered across her face; the Velcro was tattered and filled with sand, the sticky rubber edges were worn a little round, but climbing shoes are climbing shoes and she’d need them on the cliff. 

Now she lifted her head and gazed at the wall, it was huge and it was complex, she saw massive arches above towering buttresses, cracklines that snaked into huge golden slabs and curtains of overlaps. The centrepiece of the wall, an immaculate pillar that dropped directly to the sand was a delicate thing, massive and elegant and tempting. As her eyes followed the line of the pillar toward the sand she saw it, and she bent and peered at it and grinned still harder. Sunken into the granite as it swooped in to the sand, tiny and almost invisible, was a golden arrow. And it was pointing up. 

A shadow flowed across the sand and with a raucous cry the bird landed. It didn’t cross her mind to question where the bird came from, or why the bird came at all. It was simply there, like the beach and the big wall and the faintest sound of music that was almost delicate enough to smell. It simply was. It was a gull, a big gull, white as the sand and looking at her with a big grin across its face; and hanging from it’s beak by a piece of sun-bleached climbing cord was a bag, a torn bag covered in fiery red chillies, torn and faded and almost broken. But every climber knows that a chalk bag is a chalk bag is a chalk bag, she’d need it on the wall to dry the sweat from her fingers. 

The bird walked toward her, big orange feet flattened on the sand, still smiling. She took the bag from its beak and passed the cord around her waist, turning to face the wall again as she did so. The gull dropped her a wink and then with a single flap of its huge wings it floated away on the warm wind. Now she bent and tightened her boots, dipped her hands into the chalk bag and absently blew her fingers to remove the excess. Then she laid her hands against the granite, it was warm and rough, and the touch of it stirred a memory in her which she couldn’t quite catch, for it was lighter than the wind and quicker then her. And she raised a foot and began to climb.