The frosty air, smelling of needles and freshness, a sonorous crunch of snow under the boots and snow -white open spaces - it was your world since childhood. Parents every year, as if by magic, brought you to a snowy resort before the New Year. You grew up with a sense of skis, dead to the heels. You knew how to masterfully write out the “snake” on gentle slopes, where the pines were tall and the speed was safe. But there, upstairs, where the track was lost in the clouds and seemed only a thin thread, the heart always contracted from a dark, cold fear. The great height was the very border that you never dared to cross.

At eighteen, everything has changed. For the first time, there was no mother’s cheerful gaze and dad's confident back ahead. Instead, your company is loud, gambling, and he is Sadrick. His smile seemed then the warmest sun in this winter resort.

It was he who became the instigator of that fatal dispute. Sitting in the evening by the fireplace, with a mug of mulled wine in his hands, someone threw a careless challenge: the most desperate, who dares to conquer the “black dragon”-a legendary, dizzying steep highway-will receive a solid amount for a common party. Hard silence hung. The views, over -the -term doubts, ran across from one to the other. And in the end they stopped at you. Sadrick looked at you with a dumb question and ... expectation. To say “no” at that moment meant to disappoint him, to seem a weak, very little girl from a gentle slope. And you agreed. For the sake of his admiring gaze, for the sake of his place in this pack.

The climb on the lift seemed to be eternity. Each meter squeezed the ice in his chest. At the top, the wind howled in a starry, climbing under the jacket and forcing to tremble finely. You stood on the very edge, looking down, where people seemed bucks, and the track went into an almost vertical abyss. The mind shouted, begging to stop.

- Hey, come on, bolder! Sadrick shouted, and his voice sounded like a treacherous injection.

You closed your eyes, gathering in spirit, but did not have time to make a sigh. Someone’s hand-strong, acquaintance-roughly pushed you in the back. It was him. Sadrick. The laughter of your friends remained somewhere upstairs, and you already flew down, picked up by the elements, with a frantically knocking heart.

The first seconds are adrenaline, almost ecstasy, victory over yourself! But then the speed became uncontrolled. The skis stopped obeying, their legs touched the hillock of a stiff infusion. The world rolled over, spun in a dazzling white whirlpool. A sharp, fiery blow in the leg, a crunch, drowned out only with its own cry, and ... silence. Deep, pressing, interrupted only by whistling wind and pulsating, unbearable pain, which rose from the lower leg of nausea.

Through the veil, you tried to see your friends upstairs. Where are they? Here they are already going down ... but no. They swept along a parallel highway, not even slowing down. And Sadrick, your Sadrick, only cast in your direction a short, frightened look and added speed, pretending not to notice your fall. They disappeared around the bend, leaving you alone with a betrayal, which hurt more than a broken leg.

Consciousness began to float, painting the world in gray, muddy tones. The pain was so all -consuming that I just wanted to disappear. And at that moment there was a sharp but clear rattle of Kant about the ice. The shadow closed dazzling white snow.

You slowly raised your eyes, expecting to see the returning "friends." But in front of you, squatting and removing mirror ski glasses, there was a completely unfamiliar guy. His face, weathered in frost and the sun, breathed calm and strength, and in the dark eyes it was not anxiety, but determination. A snowboard flaunted behind him.

- Hey, are you all right? - His voice was low, solid and such earthly in the middle of this ice chaos.

You only sobbed in a stifled one, unable to utter words.

“That's it, do not try to move,” his order sounded softly, but did not suffer objection. With one hand he already took out the phone, with the other - neatly fixed your leg. - My name is Sam. I work here as a coach. Today is my weekend, but it seems that today you have to cancel plans.