Prompt Collab- Whoop Whoop!

Hey y’all!  So Em & I each wrote a short story (about a page) on this prompt. We’re finally doing something after disappearing into black holes for four months. Sorry bout that by the way…

Kat’s story – Death Cliff

            It had been a long time since Cecilia had seen the light.  She stared at the chopping horizontal plane of rich blue, thousands of feet below her.  Taking a deep breath, shivering, she rubbed her dewy skin for the thousandth time and stared out at the lapis lazuli horizon.  Not a light could be seen but the orange glow of some star or planet, far out behind the sheaves of mist.  Searching in vain for one last hope, Cecilia rotated her cold body, ragged and blue like a frosted pane, and examined the thick and heavy lines of trees.  The forest was identical, as the minds of the propagandized people.  Not a soul shows itself, although whispering runs through the mould-green branches, as they swerve and slice through the gelid air.  Beyond the seemingly infinite border of trees that rim the land, unevenly cropped grey foliage brushes the bare stone like a badly done buzzcut.  Cecilia shivered in the eerie atmosphere.  The gravelly cliffs where she sat were high up from the midnight blue sea.  

It would have been beautiful, had it not been so cold.

Off in the distance, almost cut off by the clouds that shut off all light but that of the single orange planet, a whale flips its tail besides a lonely iceberg.  

Cecilia has seen this sign of life many times before, and she shakes her head at the icicle mirage.  

A cormorant calls, and is suddenly silenced.  The mossy dust shivers on the gravel, yet there is no wind.  Cecilia is dying, yet there is no remedy.

The earth is cold.

The thousands of lives which have passed its span on the planet’s bounteous surface are but living memories now.  

A cricket chirps.  Cecilia remembers that sound.  She has heard it every forty minutes for the past ten years.

It is a dead sound.  

Everything has died but Cecilia.

And so she stands, her ankles rolling on the slippery gravel, trembling in the lone ray of the orange star.  

That ray has been the one glimpse of warmth in Cecilia’s dying world.  She hardly remembers what warmth is now, or crickets, or sustenance other than the dust-paste that is the arctic moss.

Then a gust of wind rattles the cliff.  When was the last time she truly felt that harsh breeze upon her face?  She has heard that sound of memory countless times.  Gravel shakes as she raises her crumbling self to her feet.

And Cecilia leaps.

Em’s story-A Letter

I lumber out of the boat onto dry land. I try to avoid the waves but they move despite my desire for them to stay put. My feet get wet.

I gaze up onto the top of the mountain and nearly gasp. The clouds are just as overwhelming and shadow inducing as I suspected they would be.

The opposite of how I suspected them to look. Normally, I let my mind wander and I overestimate how something will look. But this time my mind was frighteningly accurate.

People venture here all the time. Tourists come from all over. Trying to find what exactly happens here.

People come to this mountain all the time but no one ever comes back.

Few people know the secret. This is where people go to die. Not to be accidentally stolen from life. But to end it well and beautifully.

My mother died two months ago. Not just died, died, but killed herself. She stole herself away from life. I can’t live without her. I need her to see that I’m always going to be by her side.

I remember her soft words right before oxygen left her lungs. “Life is beautiful, but death is sacred.”

I begin my trek up the hill in near anticipation. Words of poetry whisper softly in my ear as my feet hit the wet grass. The great unknown is near now, my beloved, reach out and grasp with all your soul.

I start running. The clouds come nearer and nearer and I’m in their shadows.

The great unknown is near now, my beloved.

And there it is. The Fountain of Fair Life. The unknown.

Reach out and grasp with all your soul.

The pool is supposed to be bottomless, so drowning is like a never ending swim.

The great unknown is NEAR now, my beloved.

I hear my phone ring, I ignore it. I want to write down this poetry but I know it will never be found.

Reach out and grasp with all your soul.

When was the last time I felt truly alive?

When I jumped.

1000 lights flash before my eyes and my heart melts like chocolate.

But of course, it was beautiful.

Terribly, horribly beautiful.

The great unknown is HERE now, my beloved, reach out and grasp with all your soul.