Horrible dream.

The other week I dreamt -

I was hiking with a friend from high school, up a two-track and through a forest and up onto a high hill leading to an overhang peak with a breathtaking vista over the hill and then even further over a small denuded hill rolling down towards a wooded valley where some small town was located.

As we stand on this overhang, I suddenly notice the ground caving in beneath her feet, but my first reaction is to reach up and grab the edge of the rock ledge high above me, and as I do that, she's already fallen away because of the ground crumbling beneath her feet.

I'm hanging there just barely for a minute or two, but am able to edge myself over a few feet, and then I let myself drop down onto a lower rock outjut, and from that outjut I'm able to ease myself up and sorely hike downhill, and then after that down the denuded hill further.

At some point I call 911, and as I do that I see in my mind's eye her body tumbling through space, silhouetted in front of the hill.

For some reason, though, I go down further into the valley to find people, and when I later return to the foot of the hill, ambulances are surrounding the body, and someone tells me that she actually died six minutes ago.

At that, I'm filled with an overwhelming horror that if I had sought her out immediately instead of hiking into the valley, I could have done something to keep her alive till the ambulances came.

. . .