They were so soft, the Andes. 14,251 feet above sea level, the only things were woolen hills coated with wind-brushed grasses and a purple sunset haze, and one beige speck miles in the distance, more likely to be a llama than anything that had felt human touch. It was barren, frozen, uninhabitable land, and all I could think was how soft it all seemed. 

We stood on one such purple hill, although the grass beneath my boots was deep green. The mountains rose in front of us, a fine-tooth comb running through a hundred layers of colored clay. You could see everything at altitude. Every divot, every shade of red or navy or magenta. Shadows the size of gods. Sun set on our backs, and hills softened lilac in the shadow. The mountains glowed from the inside. 

Wind struck through leather, breathed through wool, and sliced past the two pairs of cheap gloves we had between the seven of us, thin wrists doubled in a finger clasp. It stole steam from the surface of boiling mate we passed from hand to hand, the hot drink held in silver steel. Tears flew from wind-burnt cheeks. Exposed skin was raw in minutes, and the light was leaving.  

I imagined I would be warm if I laid my body down on the lavender-sage fleece of the hills. It seemed unthinkable that these mountains wouldn't radiate heat. An optical illusion; the warm hills just within reach were miles away, and the night was to bring ice, isolation.

Tomás took off down the hill. The rest of us followed, gravity pulling us running into this empty cavern of the earth. The angle of elevation was higher than any expected. He stopped at an edge, though there really was no edge, it just continued down, down until the muted grey hills met desert rock. Charlotte was the first to reach him. It was the second time they'd met. They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, staring, softly crying, trembling from cold. 

We had driven above the clouds for an hour and a half, and we would descend in two hours under the watch of the stars in a moonless night. Stopping when we felt like it, headlights lighting up silent cacti twenty-feet high. Up was the Milky Way, with no other lights for dozens of miles except the boys, twenty minutes behind, headlights beaming across the valley.

The four others joined. I went with them too. But I was watching the hills. Darker now. I prayed a silent prayer that we would all make it to a bed that night, knowing that if a car broke down or a tire went flat it would be a fight to survive. I swallowed the wad of coca leaves we stuffed behind our molars, and grazed the numb patch of cheek with my tongue. I thought about God.

The mountains shone around us in a thousand wavelengths. Shapes blurred. Shades shifted. Depths warped, distance flipped. Wind measured the closing space between bodies. Eyes dried and glistened again. Charlotte and I headed skyward together, stopping to breath-catch every ten steps. Turning each time, we settled on the cold green grass as if we had always been there. We would be there forever. I thought about love, and a notion tugged gentle at the back of my heart that I should be wishing for company right now, praying for my person to see this with me. 

Charlotte and I watched our friends below, boys we had met only hours earlier on a sun-blanched trail. They played like children, dark clothes stark against the dusk. We had been chosen, would live and die into the hills, children of the altitude as long as we remained.