Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

15.2 Crazy

We take a different route back, avoiding Finley, I guess. I crawl after Darcell through a tiny opening near the ceiling of one tunnel and we pop out into another. He leads me up a spiral staircase of carved sandstone and before I realise it an arch above us opens onto the night sky.

Darcell stills in the archway, toes brushing the edge of the rock. From the stairs below it looks as if he's standing on the edge of night. I cross my arms and peer up at him, silhouetted against the stars. He stares absently out into the gardens.

"What are you doing?"

"I have an idea," he says, breaking his stare to glance back at me. I step up to the ledge beside him, placing a hand on the stone wall, when I see the drop at my feet. I see what he's been staring at. The gardens stretch out before us to touch the lights of Norgara. The dark hump of Seven hunches behind it.

Darcells eyes glisten with reflected light.

"It's crazy." he whispers, lost to the view again.

A cool breeze thrills along my arms as I look down. This ledge is high.

"We could put lights, under the skin, right here." He points to his own forearm. I meet his gaze. "It's crazy, right?"

I blink back at the lights of Norgara. They look like a tangled string of fairy lights. The darkness gives the illusion that we could step right off the this wall and into the streets. I breathe in the breeze, adrenaline buzzing about from place to place inside me.

"It's crazy. Impossible, even." I glance across at him. He's balancing, toes on the edge, heedless of the height. His eyes rest on me, measuring my distance to the edge.

I sway closer to the drop, fingers fluttering with adrenaline. It would be so easy. A step, a breath, a word. Easy to plummet.

But there's barrier there, some switch in my mind that restrains me from tipping over the edge. Call it self-preservation, call it sanity.

My gaze flies farther afield, to Seven's walls looming beyond the lights. Sometimes your sanity is wrong. Sometimes you just have to step from the ledge.

"I'll do it," I rasp.

"Really?" He asks, drifting closer. I look at the lights and the murky ground far below, biting my lip.

"You don't think it's crazy then?" He asks.

I snort, "Of course it's crazy." I'm just crazy enough to try it.

He chews on that response for a moment.

"Fair enough." He dives from the wall, collapsing into a rolling ball in the shadows below.

"You're going to break your neck one day," I shout after him and launch myself off the wall. I land on the balls of my feet, sinking into a heavy squat.

Darcell laughs, "Not before your knees give out."

We run back through the dark to his father's gothic house.