An Unexpected Destiny (Completed)

An Unexpected Destiny

Chapter 3: Don't Look Down

"It started out as a feeling," Regina Spektor sang. I am still floating, hardly aware. Her song weaves its way through my mind. I feel nothing but weightlessness. Suddenly, the song ends and everything is silent for a moment. Then that moment is gone and there is roaring in my ears once again. My body is sucked into a vortex, sensation beginning to return, right before it disappears again. My mind just takes it all in impassively. No worries.

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Cold air rushes my face and a lock of brown hair falls onto my cheek. Eyes still shut, I feel rocks and other lumps poking into my back. My body is rigid for a moment, as if braced for something; then it gears up and I am aware of how the temperature seems to have dropped significantly from the eighty degrees of the day. My clothes feel damp. My senses pick up on something that my brain is unable to fathom. My heart quickens. The air exhales.

My eyes fly open.

Light blue sky strewn with long white clouds. Blurry, faraway trees blanket a-- mountain?

The wheels in my brain turn. There were no mountains in Indiana. Steeps hills yes, but not mountains.

More cold air. Time to move. I am laying slightly on my side, mainly on my back. My legs are bent, one under the other at the ankles and one arm is underneath my head while the other is gripping rock and moss. I tuck my chin in to see what I am holding. Black, moist rock dotted with dirty green moss. My thumb strokes the moss for a moment.

 I sit up quickly, my body working more than my brain. Supporting myself with one hand, I check myself over: eyes trailing over my legs, up my torso, chest and shoulder. My gaze ends with turning my head outward. It is open all around, just sky and . . . water, below. As if I am in the air, but resting on something solid.

I whip my head back behind me. A rock wall greets me. Something is very wrong. My eyes trail up the rock wall for about twenty feet, before I see it end with grass hanging over, the same sky above. "Oh," I whisper.

I'm on a cliff. Or rather below one, which means I am on a ledge. In the air. Nothing but a thin slab of random, jutting rock to keep me from plummeting to my death. My heart races on and my hands feel clammy. A muscle in my neck forces me to look toward the mountain again. Not down. Never down.

To my right, is the sparkling blue sea. At least, I think it's the sea. I know without looking that to my left, the rest of the cliff stretches. I do not look because if I do, I will look down. Taking a deep breath, I begin to inch closer to the rock wall. Without acknowledging it, I know I am right on the edge of the ledge.  Amazing I didn't roll off, like rolling out of bed in the morning.

I scoot about three very slow inches when my traitorous eyes lock onto the hand clutching the rock closest to the edge. I freeze. And I do the most idiotic thing:

I look down.

My eyes had slid right over my hand and over the ledge. Confounded.

At first, a frightened thrill runs through me at the scene below, similar to the ecstasy one feels when teetering on the top of a very tall and steep hill while riding a roller coaster. Except, I am not strapped in. With a gasp, I scramble backwards until my back smacks into the wall, clutching the collar of my shirt.  My heart is threatening to bust out of my chest while my body is frozen in a cowering stance. The forest spreading far below is a green blanket.  All at once, memories fill my head.