Day 9: Falling
Just a quick one-off, more for the concept than the story. Unnamed male whumpee, environmental whump.
CWs: Falling, injury (broken bones), hyperventilating.
Words: Just under 500
He held very, very still, the weight of the snow almost overwhelming against his back. His legs trembled with effort, boots slowly slipping forwards no matter how firmly he dug them into the ground.
It hadn’t been a large avalanche. Only a small portion of snow and ice had broken away from the mountainside and fallen, cascading down the steep slope and off the cliff below.
He’d even managed to avoid the worst of it by stumbling sideways before it reached him, but hadn’t been quite fast enough. Now he was a hand’s width from the edge of a decidedly fatal drop, with who knew how much frozen weight pressing him towards the precipice.
His heels left furrows in the snow and his breathing sped up to a panicked wheeze, clouds of icey air half-obscuring the view of trees far below. He thought about trying to throw himself sideways, hoping the remnants of the fallen mountainside would somehow roll over him without dragging him down too, but he knew it was hopeless.
With vision condensed into a clear, narrow tunnel by fear and lack of oxygen, he spotted a tree sticking out from the cliff face some ways down from where he stood. The angle didn’t allow him to see exactly how far down the foot of it was, but it couldn’t be more than two stories, and that was survivable, right? People had survived falls like that.
The tree was a little to his left. He’d have to coordinate his movements exactly right, propelling himself slightly outward and at an angle to hit the tree, all abruptly enough that the snow wouldn’t have time to push him off course.
Even as he thought this, the toe of one boot passed just over the cliff’s edge, suddenly silhouetted against the emerald green of the trees. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and jumped.
The fall was longer than he’d hoped, but he did hit the tree. He hit it very hard. It cracked several of his ribs; he let out a shocked puff of air, too winded to scream, and hung draped over the creaking trunk like a coat tossed over someone’s arm. The forest swayed sickenly in the distance below.
With a great deal of pain and effort and more pain, he scrambled into a sitting position with his legs on either side of the trunk and his back against the cliff. Wrapping his arms around his throbbing sides, he let out a thin sob - it hurt too much to inhale deeply.
The cliff face stretched featurelessly out on his left and right, and below him. Propped behind the tree, he was no longer in danger of falling, but he wondered if it would’ve been better for the avalanche to carry him all the way down to begin with.