The Brink

I stood on the very edge. The cool soft world enveloping me in folds of misty white. All was endless, coiling white fingers reaching to pull me ever closer, ever nearer. As if I did not know, as if I had not seen the edge, the brink, the long plummet that would await my next footfall. I did not step. I had come to wait. To wait a little while longer.

The air stirred. Something disturbed the rolling mists. The wind had changed its direction. It was time. I waited as mists poured away from me like a running river, over the brink and into the white expanse before me. And then the sky itself was transformed.

The deep blue light of day that saturated the predawn hours was beginning to fade away. The sky grew brighter, the air crackled with excitement as the world began to awake. The sky, now shades of violet and livid pink, was still dusted with sparkling silver stars as the black silhouettes of the morning birds crossed back and forth.

A moment, a breath, a single blink of an eye, and the sun awoke above the world. The mists were burned with golden color as the heavens became a large spill of mixing colors and shades, a playground of rainbows and stars. The swirling mists, burning golden bright, grew fainter and fainter as the sun rose higher. The dew steamed off the grass, and the height of the mists dropped lower and lower, revealing the plummet that awaited.

The last of the morning was gone, the golden sun revealed what lay beneath the flowing mists of morning. It roared, churned, and beat its fists against the cliff I stood. The mighty turquoise ocean, waves crested in brilliant white foam, threw itself against the world as bright sunlight sparkled upon bright waters.

And there stood I. There upon the very brink of the world, where the great ocean reached out beyond the far horizon. Gulls called, the wind blew stronger still, and the great emotion began to arise. I wanted to fall to my knees in the soft, wet earth. But I didn’t. Instead, I turned and walked away, the roar of the seas still behind me.

And then, I turned once more, gave a short run, and leapt from the brink of the world.