I'm glad I pushed. There's a finger of
stone that I barely miss, sticking out from the base of my island.
That would have hurt.
I'm tumbling, now, falling, I think,
through the mist. My island is gone, and the sound of rain on leaves
doesn't seem terribly strong, now, with the blood rushing in my ears
and my heart pounding so fast and so hard.
I can't take this back. I've stepped
off, into I know not what, and am tumbling from somewhere I didn't
know much to somewhere that might not even be. The terror of that
grips me, squeezes my bowels and bladder, tears at my voice and sends
my fingers scrabbling to find some purchase in the wind to pull me
back to where I was. Where things were predictable and safe, if
alone.
But there is no purchase, of course.
It is mist, fog, air, wind. Nothing more. Below I can see no more
than I could before. I seem to have stopped tumbling, though there's
no real way to tell. I have a sudden vision of me, and a thousand
floating rocks of islands and the mist and we're all falling
together. I can't catch another island because we're all falling
together, and I see myself slowly accumulating bits of dust and stone
flung away from the islands until I become like them, giant rocks
floating in a mist that has no shape and no place and no time.
With that thought, the gray in front of
me changes, darkens, and stops my plummet in a flash of light and
pain and blackness.
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