We are here again, and this time, it's dark. That awful wind tears and claws at my skin and clothes, invisible whips lashing us mercilessly. Overhead, the moon is sickly and thin, but it casts an unnatural light, pallid and stark. There are no stars. The sky is the color of blackest charcoal ink, the eerie moonlight my only illumination.
The surface we stand on is solid shale, slate-blue and unyielding. The precipice hangs suspended over a yawning canyon, as dark as the sky overhead. There is no returning from a drop so final. Your heels are only an arm's length away from the edge, your back to the gaping abyss. The wind shrieks and howls, furious at everything and nothing.
Your eyes are lifeless. You do not look at me, but through me, as if I do not exist. Your face is blank, not written with anger, sadness, sobriety, or anything else at all. It is the face of a dead man.
And I'm screaming I'm yelling I'm shouting at you, waving my arms and shaking my fists and contorting my face, rooted firmly to the spot but aching to move anyway and shaking from the strain of holding still. The wind, the angry, hate-filled wind, snatches the words from my mouth as soon as they're formed, scattering them everywhere to rest in pieces at the bottom of the trench you balance so precariously on. My words fall like so many useless matches, meant to ignite an argument or a discussion or anything, but burned out before they even get going. They fall as if they mean nothing, for, truly, they do. You do not hear.
My anger gives way to a sadness so deep and complete that I don't know what to call it, much less where it came from or what I should do. I cannot bear this, not anymore. I bury my head in burning hands as my shoulders shake, and I am lost. You're still unmoving, though I am gone for many long moments. I mourn the past, the present, and what I now know cannot be. I mourn the future I can't have and all the effort I spent trying to reach it. I mourn you, even though you're a yard away. The wind buffets my immobile body. The moon looks on in cold disregard. And still, you look through me.
When I finally look up again, it is to see that you haven't changed, and now, at last, resolve hardens within me. I say your name a final time, and now you're moving. A single step back.
We lock eyes in the final instant, and in that split second, I think I see a flicker of something--remorse? anger? relief? guilt?--but then you are gone, disappeared, swallowed by the gaping maw of the abyss.
The wind suddenly halts, the newfound silence complete, broken only by the sound of footsteps as I leave the jagged point and unsettling night behind.
O.o very moving
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