Four days down. No way back up.
I came alone because I'd already buried one person I loved, and I wasn't going to be the reason anybody else got a stone with their name on it.
Then I put my ship into a canyon wall on a world with no ground.
She was standing on the edge like it was a sidewalk. Grey wings folded down her back. Utterly unimpressed by me, my crash, and my apologies.
She's the one who decides who rises and who falls here. Nine thousand people arrange their whole lives around her word.
She's also been performing her grief in front of every one of them, once a year, for six years — because that's what they need from her.
I know exactly what that costs. I've been doing the same thing with my mouth shut.
Now there's one path to the bottom, and it's four feet wide, and it's ours.
Four days of ledges and storms and nothing between us but two kilometers of open air and everything neither of us has said out loud.
I'm terrified of heights.
I'm going to have to let go of the rock anyway.
And when we reach the canyon floor — what then? She can't survive my world. I can't live in hers.
Somebody's going to have to fall first.
Genre: Science Fiction
I came alone because I'd already buried one person I loved, and I wasn't going to be the reason anybody else got a stone with their name on it.
Then I put my ship into a canyon wall on a world with no ground.
She was standing on the edge like it was a sidewalk. Grey wings folded down her back. Utterly unimpressed by me, my crash, and my apologies.
She's the one who decides who rises and who falls here. Nine thousand people arrange their whole lives around her word.
She's also been performing her grief in front of every one of them, once a year, for six years — because that's what they need from her.
I know exactly what that costs. I've been doing the same thing with my mouth shut.
Now there's one path to the bottom, and it's four feet wide, and it's ours.
Four days of ledges and storms and nothing between us but two kilometers of open air and everything neither of us has said out loud.
I'm terrified of heights.
I'm going to have to let go of the rock anyway.
And when we reach the canyon floor — what then? She can't survive my world. I can't live in hers.
Somebody's going to have to fall first.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Tessa Knox's Cliff's Descent