Loma stared up at the jagged crags behind her. The sun shone somewhere beyond them, outlining their cruel, serrated edges with a golden ribbon of light and leaving them as a gathering of hard, cold silhouettes looming over her.

The sound of a small pebble bouncing down the cliff at her back made her snatch her attention away from the outcrop to check what had caused it.

"Never EVER look up." her mother used to say to her when she was a kid, "There is nothing up there for you to see, only rocks. When danger comes, it will come from below. Always keep your eyes below."

Loma could see no source of danger. The pebble must have just been a stray mover in the sea of stone and occasional rubble of her cliff-side world.

Loma's eyes wandered again to the savage, jutting walls of rock above her. Over the top of them, somewhere, was the answer to all her wonderings and musings. It had to be over the top of them. That was where no one wanted her to go, so it had to be there. They didn't want her to go there because she might decide to stay there. That was it.

"Loma! What are you doing?"

Loma jumped and looked guiltily at the ground, ashamed at being caught looking up when she was supposed to only look down. Down or across, but never up.

Loma's friend shook her head disapprovingly. "That habit's going to get you killed, Loma. You're a black sheep and that isn't a good thing. Stop dreaming so much and concentrate on reality for a while."

"But, Yolanda, don't you ever wonder what's over the top of those crags? We've never been there and it's so close. What if there's a beautiful world of green with lovely flowers and sparkling waters?" Loma said.

"Then we would live there and not here." Yolanda answered with typical mindless logic, "I daresay it's just more rocks and less of everything else."

Loma looked up one last time. Over the top of those crags, perhaps there was a world of lush grass where you were allowed to look up if you wanted to.

She sighed. Well, it wouldn't be for her to find it, the herd was browsing below, below where Loma was supposed to look. She may be a "black sheep", but she was still, and would always be, bound to the flock. Go where everyone else goes, run when they run, bleat when they bleat, think what they think. There was no room for galloping over mountains, here, even if she was a mountain goat. There was no room for anything but the herd.