The Shore and the Cliff. By Violet LaFleur

It stood before her: momentous, impossibly gigantic. A piece of blue sky paper torn un-neat to reveal the perforated brown corkboard behind it. Specks of green, like mold, sprouting wherever they could find a grip between the cork's partings.

The mountain measured impossibly tall above her. Sylvia stared. She stared at the cliff face with the awe struck eyes of Adam's virgin gaze upon the sight of God.

The road down the path was a twisty, steep one. Paved and smooth, but a steady workout to climb back up. It started a ways away of the mountain, winding down in branch covered awning until they parted to reveal the grandios sight.

Cutting uneven across the sky, Sylvia traced it down from top to bottom with her eyes, her head moving as gradual bobbing waves across the sea. She could hardly believe what she was witnessing. A song of chirping crickets rose, first violins to a bass of cicadas, providing a buzzing, static silence to drape the entire moment in. Her breath steadied, in and out, as she continued to stare.

This was not what she came here for. By the trail. As soon as her eyes averted, she was back on the path to the river.

As she walked, she could not help to notice the encompassing, blanketing silence brought upon by the ambient insects, like some sort of ecological forcefield bubble against any other sound. There is hardly a quiet place on this Earth, some sound or another is bound to contaminate and infect any given peace. But as far as she knew, this was silence. A silence that cordoned off this path from the impossibly loud, frustrating cacophony of the American city. For all tense and purpose, that place, constructed as if to be as obstructing to human happiness as possible, did not exist. The audio sewer of a thousand car engines, the atmospheric poison of burnt gasoline tainting the very air, the soulless stretches of parking lot oceans, and the deafening soul crushing poverty of the millions forced to participate in this wasteful, insane ballet forced upon them.

It was all cordoned off. The air was clean. The sounds were still. The mountain had blocked out the soul rot pollution, just as it had blocked the river's bonechilling gale for millennia. Sylvia tried to stop thinking on those things. Hateful, poisonous thoughts. An ovipositing of outer environment pressing itself into her. To make her just as hateful as what surrounds her. It was best to not let any amount of nattering thought taint a peace like this.

Peace. A peace she was not familiar with.

Her steps continued down the path, fifty feet above the river and altitude gently falling. stip. step. stip. step. As the crickets sounded off all around her. The canopy of mid august trees kept the setting sun off her back, but did little to quell the insects that took interest in her flesh, pausing from their songs for a bit of late supper.

"next time, I’ll take a jacket" she muttered to herself. Thirty feet above the river, she could begin to see an outlet. The outlet.

Conversation. Conversation? In this place?

Behind her, two women walked a good amount of meters away, talking loudly to eachother.

"How. Why? Why would you talk? Why would you contaminate this holy stillness with human voice??"

These thoughts and many more flooded Sylvia's mind, and would not let go. Their voices carried much farther than they would have anywhere else, and it annoyed her greatly. She did not like being reminded of this.

Slowing and allowing them to pass her, she watched as they walked off, their voices getting softer and softer. It was only when they ceased in totality that she continued down the path again. Alone. In all regards.

She could see the river to her left now. She expected it to look more beautiful than it really was. It was just a bunch of water. Sad. She hoped this would not be foreshadowing, a hope that did not carry much faith.

Along she walked, as the sun crept lower and lower behind the mountain. The picture in front of her dimmer and dimmer. She was at the crest of the outlet now. A small bar of sand on a rock shore, with two salt drained trees dangling their branches above. Stepping off the pavement, she stepped carefully onto the slime covered rocks, trying as best as she could to get as close to the water as possible. She closed her eyes, and tried her best to listen to the rolling waves.

This was a place she knew. When she was a child, her mother took her here with several other childtime friends. The bar was a vast field for little feet, peppered with rusted ship washup and maritime piping long rolled in and deposited. A world of adventure for a young mind. She and her friends would stomp along the shore, armed with sticks, being the first valiant hearts to explore this strange, treacherous frontier.

This she all remembered. And why she returned.

Opening her eyes, the river stretched on for miles before her. And all that was on the other side was another shore, another city.

"figures..." she sighed.

"that one wasn't real either."

She got up. And began walking back up the slope.

It didn’t really mean much to her. She figured it must have been a cherished moment, but it turned out not to be. All the revisit had succeeded in doing was making her long for a boat with which to navigate the river. The expanse taunted her, as if asking to be conquered. She could not even summon the strength to cry. Tears were wholly unnecessary for a moment as empty and meaningless as this one.

She thought revisiting this place would bring back anything, anything at all. Any sort of importance, any sort of guidance;connection. Anything to remind her of who she is, or who she was. There was nothing.

The memories she carried were a map, and this route had led to a dead end.

stip..step.stip..step..

The twilight was beginning to set in now, a steady blue coming down as curtains to the scene.

This was not the first time this had happened, but it was the first time it was this intensely meaningless.

She really wasn’t sure what memories were or were not hers anymore. Before, she was sure. very, very sure. without a question.

But too many years have passed, she was 24.

Lately, it was getting difficult to keep track. Not only which memories were hers, but if they were real at all. Many, if not all of them felt like videos played back to her by some ethereal operator, who commanded "okay, seen it all? you sure? ok, good. those are your memories. bye." the same weight and importance as memories of a television show.

It was difficult to explain, which was fortunate because she had no one to explain to. But if a memory has all the weight and meaningness of a book's chapter, something that happened to someone else entirely, detached from any semblance of the present, well it isn’t really your memory then, is it?

These thoughts and more came to her as she trudged up the path, deeply humid air refusing to replenish her breaths properly. The still peace was now unraveling, as her underweight, malnourished body continued the steep ascent.

"this... really.. was.. pointless... huh.." she thought to herself. The gravity of it now settling deeply.

"nothing about it... it was, just a place. there was... nothing. nothing there."

The thought was now deeply rooted. And troubling. if that memory was just a meaningless float, then which others were too? It was hardly the pointlessness of the memory itself that saddened her, but more principle that this trip has established. That was what dragged her down. gradually but surely, dragged her down.

Her pace slowed. Slowed to a standstill. There was still much of the path to go.

She stood. the deep blue sky now thoroughly soaked in all surroundings. Her tears came laboured. slowly. methodically.

"why.... am I even here... what am i doing..."

"none... none of this... none of it is helping.."

"no.. no help,,, anywhere.."

The tears began more steadily. She was completely, hopelessly, utterly, lost. Her own attempt to try and find any bridge to herself ending in another failure. Nothing to show for anything. No progress made. Just a pathetic, fractured mess. She now wept.

...

But the mountain.

The mountain, even in night's quickfell blue, the mountain still stood vigilant. Dignified. And naturally, her eyes came up to it again.

It was here long before her, and would continue to be long after. This monumental object could not be moved, not by anything. Its stability was as inherent as its existence. Even millions of years of weathering gale did little to subtract from its impressive stature. And guaranteed a million, a billion more years would not bring this thing down. Long after the age of humans, it will stand. It would stand is it does today, as remarkable and as identifiable as it was five hundred years ago, and five million years in the future.

And for some strange reason, that brought her some comfort.

She stood where nothing could touch her. Where time fell only by the tick of the sun.

This mountain,,.. it was a focal point. A central nexus. A stable structure.

Even if she was not.

===============================================================

The coming months were not kind to Sylvia. Every day that passed was a greater and greater reminder that her existence was not one compatible with outer environment. Whatever frequencies had been imprinted on her soul, there was nothing in outer environment to synchronize with those frequencies. And with every passing day, that fact alone became clearer and clearer. From every single angle: She found herself Fractured. Unfit. Un-one.

Her thoughts narrowed on that mountain, on that cliff face. She would return to visit it again. Sometimes at 5am after being unable to sleep the night. Sometimes deep into the evening. But every time, it was to see that cliff. Beautiful isnt really the word that occupied her mind. Respect. Surprise. Shock. Fear. Unbelievement. These feelings and more came to distill within her soul, as she would stare at the cliff face from down below. Somehow, always more impossibly large than she remembered. Somehow always more awe striking than she remembered.

One night, her thoughts raced just as they had before. And she felt a visit to the mountain was in order.

"oh, its far too late to go this time.."

"..."

"......"

"is it though?"

Why should she bind herself to notions of when is or is not appropriate?

It was her life. It was her mind. And no one would know it as well as she did. So she grabbed her keys, and went for another visit.

This time, she wanted to take a different path. She had seen the mountain many times from below, but she had never yet seen what the mountain sees. So, instead of walking down and to the left, she walked straight and to the right.

The dirt path went on for a good few dozen meters, well treaded by those before her. The flashlight of her phone cutting through the night. The familiar insect orchestra rose up once again, one part of many in fully separating herself from outer environment. The vines of night reclosing behind her with every step. Within a few minutes, a clearing. And once the treeline cleared and the canopy gave way to the stars,

the cliff's edge was before her.

and beyond that?

Expanse.

An expanse that rode wildly, erratically, entropically, expontentially. Past the river was rolling lights, peppered across hills of black that cut into the blue night like crashing waves. And it went on, and on and on and on. As the sky sparkled with light she had not seen in years. In a place beyond civilization, beyond time, the stars shown down as if the heavens themselves were bursting through a thin fabric, peaking in and out between the threads.

There were no lights of man to remove this masterpiece from view. No roars of machine to dampen this embrace of stillness. There was nothing that could take this away. For as immortal as the mountain was, it was nothing compared to the sky!

Her head was cocked upwards, chin as far away from her chest as could be. A mouth hung agape upon her face. With her arms limply to her side, one could assume her very soul was in-transit to On High!

And as her head fell, her gaze fell once again on the rolling black waves, trillions of times bigger than the waves of the ocean. It was all so, so, massive. As massive as anything would ever be. An electric excitement overtook her, a rise from toe to head as she finally understood. She was finally Clear. All her confusion faded. And she knew she would have to take her next steps quickly to ensure that it lasted.

Her smile was that of contentment. She walked backwards, never breaking eyeline with the horizon. She walked backwards up to the edge of the treeline, until the black branches were in her peripherals. And she began to sprint.

stipstepstipstep.

This was always what she intended. This was at the forefront of her mind from the moment she first laid eyes on the mountain, all those months ago. Months that might as well be decades. Once she had seen this thing, her mind had been set in motion, like the final line of code bringing an always fated program online. She knew that her end was already ensured. She knew that no matter what, this cliff would be part of her end. And she would be part of this cliff.

stipstepstipstepstipstepstipstep.

Pace quickening. She had done her research. Hours of it. Meticulously. 689 feet high. That is how high the cliff face was. Uniformly, almost any fall from 60 feet or more would be guaranteed to be lethal. She saw the photos of those who fell from 40 feet in suicide. She poured over the medical autopsy photographs. Their bulging red eyes, their bleeding ears. Their grey skin. That would not be her. A fall from this height would reduce her to paste. Her limbs would fly apart from the source, as her mind and body would...

stipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstepstipstep

A gunshot to the head has a surprisingly high survivability rate, you know? If not survival, then lifelong paralysis or severe brain damage. Not to mention the societal cordon that would keep her from ever trying again. It was not certain. Death by hanging was cheap and messy, requiring a good height to even snap the neck, and asphyxiation was far too long, painful, and uncertain to even bring about the end. Wrist punctures are also surprisingly survivable, with the added gauntlet of actually reaching the arteries. They are buried beneath vein and muscle and sinew and nerve. Deep, deep within the wrists. To even reach them is a feat. Uncertain. Even the carotid artery, much easier to reach, would require tremendous strength of will to pierce. Strength of will that Sylvia was too weak to harbor. But here, there was no un-chance.

This was stable.

Step.

The world detached from her. Everything slowed down. First, the sky dissapeared. Then, the hills. All in one motion. The river, the riverside path, until all became the trees and Earth.

"interesting.. isn’t it"

she thought to herself, her velocity picking up quicker and quicker.

"that this is an experience... no human can ever record"

"there is no record of what someones feeling, or thinking, as they do something like this."

"much less what they see."

the air rushed past her

"I am witness to one of the rarest sights a human can witness."

"no one else has seen what I’ve seen."

"or what I am seeing right now."

"this is a peace only a few can ever feel."

and as she closed her eyes, a gentle smile upon her face,

Sylvia became One.