I felt nothing but weightlessness as I soared through the air, then gravity did its work and my stomach was pulled downwards. I had time to utter a yell of terror before the breath was stolen from my lungs and I plummeted to my doom. I spun out of control for what felt like an eternity before something grabbed onto my leg and I was yanked upwards.
My torso slammed against something sharp and solid that knocked out what little remaining air I had in my lungs, forcing me to open my eyes as I struggled for breath.
Taking in lungful after lungful of oxygen, I saw the view below me and I took it in.
Water crashed against rock and sprayed below me in a terrifying display of beauty and power. Looking at the scene I knew one thing: I wouldn’t have survived the jump. Sharp rocks jutted out into needle points that were waiting to impale me. I looked further afield and saw the debris that had been the ship sink into the huge swells of the tide. The ocean waves reclaimed the vessel piece by piece, and I had little doubt that it would have done the same thing to me if I hadn’t been caught.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I turned my gaze up and saw Poppy looking down at me while she held onto my leg. She was suspended by a wire that she had shot into the cliff face; it carried both our weights.
“Hi there,” she said with a smile.
“Hi,” I replied with a bigger smile on my face. “Caught anything good this week?”
I had expected her to groan at my lame attempt at a joke, but she carried on smiling and nodded her head. “Yeah, I did as it happens. I caught something special… special to me at least. It’s something that I think I’ve been looking for for a very long time, and now I’ve got it, I kind of don’t want to let it go.”
My neck began to hurt from staring up at her but I didn’t care; I could stare at her face till all the blood rushed to my head and caused me to black out.
“If you’ve found something that special then I would definitely hold on to it as hard as you can because whatever it is you’ve found doesn’t sound like it can easily be replaced. Plus, you don’t want to waste any more years looking. Trust me, I know how precious time is, so my advice to you would be to hold on tight to whatever it is you’ve found and never let go. Because once you do, you don’t know when you’ll find it again or even if you can. Don’t waste time like me, do what your heart always has desired.”
She stared into my eyes and gave me the tiniest nod. “I think, I think I’ll do that,” she said as we both stared into each other’s eyes, smiles widening by the second.
