This weekend I will be doing another mass edit of Chapter 1. Which means, you guys will have to wait for Chapter 2. Thanks again for all the crits! I will post again when I'm done editing.
~Aero
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The Veil Not Seen
Chapter 1
I sat on the night shore, clutching my shivering body as the steady plip plop of rain began. Looking up, I gazed at the sea and rubbed my hands together.
It had been hours since I was out there challenging wind and water alike. I rose slowly, wincing in pain as I started walking up the shore. Through the dark night, lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating my bruised body.
I stood in a small cove, peering at the encompassing cliffs. They were enormous, slick with rainwater, littered with crags and nooks.
“Great, just great. This is exactly not what I need…”
I kicked the accursed sand in front of me. Trapped. Stuck on this God-forsaken beach. No food. No water! I picked up a shell and chucked it into the sea as I screamed at no one but the waves.
“Where’s God when you need him?”
The thunder cracked, splitting the air like wood.
“Is that your answer, God?” I glared at the sky, boring holes into Heaven, shaking a scarred fist. “Where were you when I needed you? Where were you when-”
Again, the thunder rolled and I sat down on the shore, forgetting my anger.
After a moment, the wind picked up, jingling the shark tooth necklace round my neck. I’ll always be with you, Father had said. I remember standing on the shore that day, like so many times before, with the briny smell of the sea in my nose as I watched the white clouded sails sink into the horizon.
I knew he would be gone someday but not like this. Never like this.
Tears streamed from my eyes as I gingerly touched the worn leather. Then as I peered at the black pearls that were beaded along it, an idea came. It hit me full in the face just as the lightning flashed for a second time across the cliffs.
I looked up; studying the cliffs curiously, as I painfully walked towards them and ignored the course sand that caught between my toes.
Suddenly my eyes lit up. Maybe, all isn’t lost.
I had scaled many cliffs back home; this should be no different. Or so I thought. It was my only chance. My only escape.
The rocky giant loomed above me like an unconquered demon as I reached towards it. Gripping along a cleft that snaked its way up, I began the grueling climb.
The going was slow and my muscles tired fast from the burning strain. I could barely stand as my legs trembled in the frigid air. Handhold by handhold, step by step, I clung like a babe to a mother.
Finally, I let out a short gasp as I crawled on to a shallow ledge one hundred feet up. I lay there shaking with my muscles pulsing and perspiration pouring rampant.
Slowly, I took stock of my surroundings. Jutting out of the cliff was a chimney; it was two flat faces on either side about two feet wide each and three feet across from each other.
Moving my hands across the smooth rock, I searched meticulously for some sort of crevice or crack that I could grasp.
None. Now what.
I kicked a rock angrily off the cliff as the elements hounded me. Father’s reassuring voice repeated constantly in my mind. Use your head, m’boy. God gave it to you for a reason.
Come on, Damon, think!
I began to pace back and forth along the ridge, running a quivering hand through my dark hair. My tunic and pantaloons fluttering like flags in the breeze.
Suddenly my foot slipped on the water-drowned shelf; my hands quickly shot forward covering my eyes. But as fast as it began everything stopped. Slowly my hands moved away, and I looked around confused. The sky was above me, yet I wasn’t falling like I should’ve been.
Something felt hard against my feet and head. Reaching back, I touched along a rough surface. Finally, it hit me; I was jammed between the two faces.
Letting out a sigh of relief, I quickly loosed myself and brushed off some small rock debris. Wait, I cocked my head, looking back. Everything suddenly became clear. Stepping forward cautiously, careful not to slip again, I settled my shoulders against the right face and my soles against the left. I nudged my back up a few feet, cringing as blood began to run from my dark scabs. Gritting my teeth, I ignored it as I brought up my legs. I toiled this way for hours through sweat and tear alike, lunging myself forward.
At last, I reached another ledge and collapsed, exhausted with blood streaming from my back; my tunic had long since been ripped off. Reaching back gingerly, I placed a hand on it and gasped in pain, bringing it quickly back to stare in horror at a mass of cartilage and dark blood. My hands immediately shot for my abdomen as my lungs burned with salty water bursting out. Eventually I stopped and knelt, allowing the cold rain to cleanse my body, and before I realized it, my eyes drifted shut.
Awake!
I came to, shocked and confused; eventually I organized my thoughts and tried to move. But I couldn’t-I couldn’t move!
My mind panicked, I couldn’t even move my lips, my eyes were the only thing that could move as I pleaded mentally to God.
There is always hope, no matter how bleak it may seem, there is always hope. Father’s voice comforted me.
Why did you have to die? Why couldn’t it have been me?
I sat there for hours lost in my awful memories; the storm never abating, my head slumped against my chest. My heart slowing until I could hear the steady ba boom, ba boom, and finally when I thought all hope was lost my finger twitched subtly. A tingling warmth began to spread from the tip. At first just barely, but then slowly it wove its way up my hand. Then my arm, then my shoulder, until it filled my entire body. Each nerve felt like it was on fire as I slowly moved a mud-caked knee towards my chest.
Finally, I dared to stand through the stinging pain of my legs. But it soon passed, along with the warmth, sadly. The cold was back, and the numbness was present once again but now I could move.
Looking about for the first time in hours, I saw a ladder of rocky outcroppings to my right. They were climbing ever higher, disappearing amongst the clouds. They looked to be a stairway to Heaven, and I extended my hand to grab the first one.
My breath was short and raspy, as the air became thinner and thinner. I could barely see my own hand through the clouds, let alone the next hold. Moving slightly left, I reached for a small crack. Everything was becoming hazy and it took me a minute to find it. I was so tired, delirious from the dripping sweat.
Touching with the tips of my fingers, I reached through the mist. Suddenly the ledge beneath crumbled away. Leaping up, I grabbed a hold of the final step using all my strength to pull myself on to the shallow ridge. Each vein and joint popped out barely contained in my skin. It was no longer about climbing the cliff. It was about surviving it.
My eyes rolled around wildly as I sucked air, laid flat against the cold rock. I had run out of handholds and the top lay just twenty feet up.
Not now.
“Please God, not now,” I whispered.
Glancing down, I turned from the dizzying sight. Through the clouds I could see the waves crashing like ravaging beasts against the rocky coast hundreds of feet below. I had heard tales at the old inns near the sea. Drunken sailors had drawled of men who fell from high, higher than I had seen. They had said when they hit the water… I shuddered closing my eyes.
They fluttered open after a second, and I peered through the wispy tendrils of white grasping at my face and spied a rift gaping wide to my right but just barely too far.
How can I come this far and now be at the end only to not reach it.
Again, Father’s voice rang true in my mind. When you give up, you’re failing yourself and that m’boy is the worst failure there is.
His voice brought new hope to me and my eyes shone with determination as I looked up. I would jump. I could make it. I had to. I could not go back.
Taking a deep breath, I hesitated for one second. Then I flung myself across the cliff face. Each rock raked my body, slicing through cloth and skin alike. My hand leaped forward with fingers extending and just barely touched the edge.
Whack. An overhang smacked my shoulder knocking them clean. Time froze for that one second as my legs and arms waved about wildly, and then everything rushed before my eyes as I plummeted through the fog. I screamed in agony, forming my fingers into claws and scraping the rock. It felt as if my very soul was being ripped from me as they were burned off. But suddenly a strange feeling crept into my heart. Something indescribable.
Suddenly everything vanished. The storm, the cliffs, even the sinking in my stomach disappeared and I lay in utter darkness.
lol. I've made all those changes you mentioned, thank-you so much for critiquing it! I appreciate your support more than you know.
and that he finds his father! or we learn why he's searching.
a little too eager with the comma killing here, darling, you need one between the second “handhold” and the first “step”—I blame myself for that, sorry!
but anyway...