Gabriel smiled ruefully as looked out over the precarious edge of the precipice. He was, as usual, afraid…but he was also resolved. At long last he’d understood what he should have known all along…trying to learn to fly meant accepting that you would sometimes have to fall.
And fall hard…maybe to unyielding earth, accepting the pain and trying to find the courage to climb up and try again.
Fall, perhaps, into the arms of earthbound angels there to cushion the impact, to wipe his brow and kiss his cheek; to hold him tight and beg him not to try to fly again or to stroke his hair and tell me to try again, tell him that they’ll be there as long as it takes.
Or fall, if such is the will of fate and foolishness, into oblivion, into the darkness that waits…waits patiently, inevitably…to welcome us, the fliers and the fallers, back into the endless arms of a merciful and merciless Universe.
Gabriel smiled, his heart racing, the verdant fields, winding paths, and fragrant bittersweet rosebushes stretched out so far below him that his eye couldn’t possibly take it all in; he smiled, the unbounded expanse of creation stretched out so far above him that even his wildest imaginings were too mortal to ever truly appreciate the scope and grandeur of its promises and possibilities.
Gabriel smiled, his coward’s heart…his hero’s heart…racing and urging him on…he took a deep breath…ready to learn to fly…ready to learn to fall…he looked inside his fool’s being, his immortal soul and…too late…too soon…just when he was supposed to…he stepped off the edge…
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