Pangaea Reunites

Chapter Three

I dedicate this chapter to Lets-caniff-together for making me regret and feel guilty for not updating. xD

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The next morning, I woke up to the my parents packing the hoverboard for the next night. At least they had been able to keep it moving at night so we weren't as far behind as we would have been.

"Good morning, Pheonix," my mom said sweetly. Memories of the night before came flooding back in a sudden wave.

"Good morning," I said, sounding calm—for what was going on. "Shouldn't we wake Crystal and Dad?"

"Wait," Mom said, looking at something in the distance. "What is that?"

I whipped around, in case we were in danger, but I saw a man walking up the mountain with a hiking pack and gear. He even had hiking poles.

"A person," I replied sarcastically.

"Wow. I realized that," she said. She shook Dad and Crystal awake.

"A person!" she exclaimed, almost shouting, pointing at him. We walked over to him.

"Hello!" he said in an accented voice. I observed he was of Asian ethnicity. "Do you need help?"

"Do you?" Dad asked.

"My name is Cheng," he replied. "If you need help I will give mine."

"We could go up together," Crystal suggested, "and give help to each other when we need it."

"Good for me," Cheng replied.

"Well, okay," Dad agreed. "It could be nice to have more company." At that, Cheng smiled.

Over the next day, we learned Cheng was born in China, but adopted here. He cares for all the world's creatures, so if we swatted at a fly or pesky insect, he would not like that. He was a very warming, pleasuring person to have around.

We walked and talked. He had fit a lot of food in his pack, so we would eat well tonight. It was fascinating to know we could enjoy ourselves a bit, and forget that one major detail—the world's land is converging, and it is likely we'll die.

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"Look, it's a little rabbit!" Cheng said as a fluffy, pure white, adult sized rabbit hopped past—very quickly, almost too quickly for me to think it wasn't in danger, but we all were anyway, so that didn't mean anything to me at the moment.

"Aw!" Crystal replied simply. I smiled at their statements.

A hole came, cracking the earth, and Crystal gasped. She stumbled, and I saw her hands and head suddenly at ground level, the rest of her body in a black abyss.

"Crystal!" I screamed. I raced over to pull her up. I saw wave-like movements in the ground hurtling toward us from a distance away.

"Grab on!" Mom shouted. She had both of her hands for her to grab on to. Dad rushed to grab her waist to attempt to keep her up.

Crystal slowly reached for one of his hands. They struggled to connect. In peripheral vision, I saw the rabbit fall into a crack. It didn't survive its chase.

Crystal screamed as she slipped farther away. My parents kept pulling with all of their strength, but they were drained. I raced to help and noticed Cheng doing the same. We both did what we could and applied ourselves to the task of Crystal's survival.

Still slowly slipping, Crystal just couldn't grab on. My dad let go of Mom and raced to grab her waist again to lift her up easier. I instinctively grabbed on to him to keep him up.

"No! We need more people over there!" he shouted at me.

"No way! Your feet are almost off the edge!"

It was true. His toes were hanging off the side of the cliff and were still sliding. "Go!" he urged. I raced to help the others pull Crystal up.

Crystal screamed. She couldn't hold on much longer. Strain was displayed in all of our faces—Mom, who nobly agreed to save the kids; Dad, who rushed to her and could die in a few moments with his constantly slipping feet; Cheng, who didn't even need to help, who could have just ran away if he desired—and poor Crystal couldn't receive a proper grip on our hands.

"Alright, I'm doing this," Dad muttered.

"Dad..?" I began.

"If I don't make it, well, I did it for you." Dad hopped real close to the eerie black crack in the ground and grabbed on to the cliff edge.

"DAD!" Crystal and I screamed.

"Grab on." He held a hand out to Crystal. She didn't move. "Listen to me!" he sharply snapped. "Now!"

Crystal, astounded, grabbed on to his hand and the cliff. "Calmly, use your strength to climb up. Calmly."

Slowly, Crystal pulled herself up enough for us to grab on and hoist her up. Mom, bawling, whipped her arms over to Crystal and enclosed her in a bear hug.

"Help Dad now!" I exclaimed. Chang and I walked over to him, and he looked a bit anxious.

"Not that I'm suicidal, but... I believe you can't help me here. You see—well, I guess you saw—it took so long for us to get Crystal up that there's no use to attempt to save me. You saw what it took for me to help her up, and I am a grown man. I would knock the one helping me up down, and I'd never be able to live with myself—though I wouldn't have had to for long, but you get the gist."

"Dad..." I said. "Dad?"

"I'll miss you until you join me. Good luck with the mountain mission," he continued.

"Dad?!" I exclaimed again.

"I love you. And your mother. And your sister. I'm doing this for you—my family."

With those final words, he let go of the cliff edge, tumbling into a permanent oblivion.