So I found out about Ficly thanks to Wil Wheaton, and I am so excited about it. I've come up with a couple of story ideas, and I need to start putting them up there. This was one, and I'm immensely proud of it. Sadly, Ficly only gives you room for 1024 characters, and this one ran too long. So, while I'm thinking about shortening it to fit, here's the full version.
Beautiful.
The landscape was beautiful. It was nearing sunset, and the air was starting to take that orange tone reminiscent of tired afternoons proceeding days spent with family at the park or the zoo. The mountains jutted up, through the cloud layer like tall, thin trees, and cast impossibly long, blue shadows that contrasted with the evening light of the billowy landscape as it flowed around those towering peaks. Sometimes, where the stolid mountains forced a tear in that blanket of clouds, a cavernous world could be seen, but no ground. Just those great spires stretching down for an eternity, like ancient tree trunks with no roots. All this was so impossibly far away that, even though he had been falling for some time now, maybe hours, he still hadn't even neared the cloud layer, but he wasn't looking down. Instead, he was turned upward, staring at that spot in the sky, where the towering cliff, so much taller than any mountain, arched through the sky and came to a point far above him. Colored dark by its own shadow, the cliff looked like a wide tear in the pure blue material of the sky, and he stared at it with dry eyes. He had no more energy left to cry. He could no longer see that vantage point, with its quarter-for-ten-minutes telescopes, and its ice cream stands, and red-brown dirt and gravel road, and other families visiting for the day; and little Jimmy Whittaker sincerely wished he had not tripped.
Beautiful.
The landscape was beautiful. It was nearing sunset, and the air was starting to take that orange tone reminiscent of tired afternoons proceeding days spent with family at the park or the zoo. The mountains jutted up, through the cloud layer like tall, thin trees, and cast impossibly long, blue shadows that contrasted with the evening light of the billowy landscape as it flowed around those towering peaks. Sometimes, where the stolid mountains forced a tear in that blanket of clouds, a cavernous world could be seen, but no ground. Just those great spires stretching down for an eternity, like ancient tree trunks with no roots. All this was so impossibly far away that, even though he had been falling for some time now, maybe hours, he still hadn't even neared the cloud layer, but he wasn't looking down. Instead, he was turned upward, staring at that spot in the sky, where the towering cliff, so much taller than any mountain, arched through the sky and came to a point far above him. Colored dark by its own shadow, the cliff looked like a wide tear in the pure blue material of the sky, and he stared at it with dry eyes. He had no more energy left to cry. He could no longer see that vantage point, with its quarter-for-ten-minutes telescopes, and its ice cream stands, and red-brown dirt and gravel road, and other families visiting for the day; and little Jimmy Whittaker sincerely wished he had not tripped.
