The Cinders of Dezu

14th: Falling (5)

***
Closing his eyes, Julian began to very carefully loosen his grip on the tree. Below him he had seen a branch that he might be able to make his way down to. He thought maybe an inch by inch approach was in order. As his arms loosened he felt a strange frustration. He wasn't sliding down. At all. He loosened them more. Nothing.

Julian opened his eyes and looked at the trunk he was hugging to his face. There was no way he was holding his weight with the grip he had on it. He counted to three and let go.

There he sat, arms and legs completely outstretched at his sides... and yet his chest remained on the tree. It took Julian a minute or two to get his bearings. Finally, he pushed himself off the trunk. It was like a push up. He was weighted towards the tree. He stood up. It all felt so very surreal and the darkness wasn't helping. But as he looked around at a sideways forest, he started to put together what was happening.

He walked up and down the trunk before uttering an incredulous laugh. He hopped up and down, each time his feet came back to the side of the tree.

"This is... gonna take some gettin' used to," he muttered to himself.

He jumped again, and somehow this time, he just kept going. He looked up to see the side of another tree just ahead that he was floating towards. He looked down to the forest floor which from his perspective was to his side. He knew he should have felt fear, but this was all like a dream. He felt like an astronaut floating through space.

When he reached the trunk he was floating towards, he put his hands out. Feeling his weight change, he felt the sensation of briefly doing a handstand. He rolled to a sitting position. He looked up to see the tree he had left and then looked down to see himself perched on an all new trunk.

"Gravity..." Julian whispered to himself.

He stood up again and looked around at the shadows of trees. He contemplated. It was clear there was a level of control here that he didn't quite understand. The fear he had had was beginning to subside. He was curious. He put his hand out towards a nearby shadowy tree. His body released from the trunk and began falling toward another. It wasn't terribly far but he felt the feeling of having jumped a from a large height. He began to panic. As he gained momentum he realized, if these powers worked like he was thinking they did, he may have made a grave error.

He looked around the forest for another tree and once he'd chosen, his momentum waned. He no longer felt a pull from the tree he was heading towards. His body then began falling toward his new target. As his new horizontal fall also seemed to speed out of control due to him again misjudging the distance, Julian decided he wanted back on solid ground. He made this decision too late, however, and his descent to the ground was interrupted somewhat by his entering a grouping of branches on the way down. He started wildly grabbing for tree limbs as the branches knocked him about. Suddenly, he felt a hand grip around his ankle.