The weightlessness took my breath away, the fall seeming endless. The sudden rush of wind choked me, my ears failing to register any outward sound but the piercing whoosh a jump like that would inspire. Even when I risked glancing side to side, and witnessed my entire birth group whooping and screaming mid-air in both fear and delight, I heard nothing but my own heartbeat and thought only of their split reactions.
Did those wearing pale expressions fear the unavoidable consequences of The Jump, the coming of age celebration throughout Korai Uji; the beautiful aqueous planet I called home? Or just the sudden vertical plunge from the suspended rock forming our land? And did those delighted take pleasure in the plummet from The Cliff Edge, or only the fast approaching future it initiated?
In all honesty, I knew my temporary fixation with my peers and their reactions was simply so I could ignore my own. Nevertheless, I remained acutely aware of the imminent change; and as I hit the water below on my fifteenth birth-day, just as the other hundreds in my birth group, I somehow knew life would be different now. The carefree existence I had abandoned on The Cliff Edge could never be mine again, as from this moment onwards
I could find my Soulmate.
