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The Landing
This one time, a boy tripped on a branch and fell. He didn’t hit the floor though, oh no. He just kept falling. He fell, and fell, and after a few weeks he forgot what the ground felt like. After a few months, he stopped trying to remember! He fell, and fell, while everyone else was perfectly steady. The doctors were baffled, nobody knew how this was possible. Where was he going? Why couldn’t he stop? His teachers were constantly annoyed, but they just didn’t understand how hard it is to do homework while you’re on a permanent free-fall.
One time, he got distracted while tying his shoelaces, and his shoe flew away. As he watched it get smaller in the distance, he committed a capital mistake- he imagined he flied and grabbed his shoe, liberated from the ever present fall. He felt so free for that split-second that he was in a bad mood for the next three days. The boy then vowed not to imagine impossible scenarios ever again, for he had accepted his condition, and was ready to keep falling for the rest of his days. Hope was overrated. However, whether you hope for them or not, things happen. One day, his body touched the ground. There was no crack, no gush of blood, as he had often feared. He just… laid there. The people walking by looked at him funny, wondering about the wild look on his face. He tried to act natural. After the vertigo had passed, he tried to stand up. He had forgotten how hard it was. With shaky hands he dusted off the dirt from his pants, and shirt, and he simply thought, “What next?”
