Sky Fall
In the inside of a plane several hundred feet above the ground the excitement bubbling inside of my chest is making me giddy. "Are you ready Skyler?" asked the instructor, "yeah" I say. How could I not be ready? The plane has been level for so long that I would've gotten impatient had I not been looking forward to this for so long, "Then let's go on three," as I grip the straps on my parachute excitedly, the huge grin on my face somehow gets even wider without tearing the skin, "One," I scrunch my toes in my shoes I'm so excited "Two..." as the door on the plane opens I can feel the wind cool my scalp as my heart starts pumping blood even faster to keep the cold from dampening my mood. "THREE!" and we jump into the open air.
Silence, that's my first impression of free fall, then as gravity takes its hold on my body the wind starts to blow past my ears. At first it sounds like how wind on the ground does, but as I accelerate it starts to lose its characteristic whistle and both sound and feel like someone is pointing a leaf blower at my head.
Of course, the feeling of having my eyeballs dried is nothing compared to the awesome sight of the ground looming before me as I look down past the clouds. Or the fact that I can feel myself moving in different directions depending on how I orient my limbs.
'so this is what falling feels like' I muse, normally when you look down at the ground from high places it'd just be a reminder of how long it will take to climb down, but here, I can admire it and then get to the ground quickly. 'hmm, no that isn't why, what makes this so much... more?' Is it the wind in my ears? the knowledge that im outside with nothing to isolate me from the freefall?
'just what makes this so awesome?' I decide to quit thinking about how cool it is and focus on the exhilaration this provides, to etch it into my memory.
After realizing I've been falling for a while and it's time to pull the chute, I pull just to realize that something is wrong, I pull harder, then pull again, all the while growing more panicked. eventually I start to take off my parachute just to turn it around and trying to open it like a backpack, after fiddling around a bit, it works and the multicolored cloth starts to billow out, my relief is shortlived however, when immediately after catching the air, the parachute jerks up out of my hands, leaving me even more screwed than before. as I gaze up helplessly at the parachute, I start to panic even harder than before. I get the brilliant idea to take my shirt off and u
se it to slow my fall, but to no avail, for as it catches the wind, despite me feeling a jolt to my shoulders, I still am going fast enough to make ground meat on the ground.
'is this it?' I think hopelessly 'I taste perfect bliss and so my karma runs out?' as the ground rushes towards me, I let go of the shirt that accomplished nothing except dislocating my shoulders, 'or maybe this is some sort of punishment? maybe birds are the things made in gods image and he's pissed we want to take his gift for ourselves?' as my thoughts get more and more hysterical, the ground inches ever closer, until it's not inching anymore and it's flying straight toward my face.
*CRUNCH*
as soon as I register the fact that I didn't die immediately, pain rushes through my body, 'maybe I should've kept the shirt, maybe then I would have survived long enough tet to a hospital' luckily the intense pain starts to fade, as my vision blurs, I wonder if this is what dying feels like. As I've never been knocked unconscious or fainted, for all I know this is just the result of a concussion and not my soul leaving my body, but then my vision comes back, but this time in a third person perspective as I see a puddle of meat and clothing on the ground, 'ah' I thought 'I didn't faint, I am dead, wonder where I'll go' I notice that my view is rising upwards 'well unless literally everyone got it wrong, going up is a good thing'
***
Calminus was in a pickle, a downright fermented cucumber, one of the mortals on his world had somehow ended up with a body that required two souls to function properly, and only one soul had formed inside it, not only that, but they somehow managed to hide it from him. Now it's not that they meant to hide it, he would have been able to find out if he had, but he had managed to grow nineteen years old without finding out or anyone else noticing. it wasn't until he had asked one of the older mortals why his true form was half the size that it should be that his body was examined and once the elder discovered the problem, as one of the mortals in his world the discovery was immediately made known to him.
The main problem was how to go about getting a second soul for the body, he could form a new soul and stick it in, but given the fact that it would be a newborn soul in a fully formed body, the problems would be too many to list off. He could copy the memories from the bodies first soul and put it in the second, but given the fact that the two souls would be unique, the second souls personality would have a disconnect with the memories formed by the first souls personality.
Suddenly Calminus found a solution: get a soul that has recently died and put it in the body alongside the first one, that way, they would have their own memories formed by their own personality. Now Calminus had to narrow down the criteria for the soul, first, they had to come from an intelligent being, second, they had to be humanoid or the disconnect with the body would be too great, third, the soul had to be naturally attuned to the fire attribute, fourth, they had to have a disposition that wouldn't make them clash with the first soul or the body they would inhabit, fifth, they had to have been alive exactly as long as the first soul.
It was the last criteria that was proving troublesome, while there where plenty of people that mortals would qualify as the same age as the first soul, it wasn't enough to be born on the same day or the same hour or even the same second, the souls had to have been formed within nanoseconds of each other. and there weren't any souls in his world who hadn't ascended to the after life that fit the bill, and as he looked he realized no one in his world fit the bill. so he decided to search on other worlds, as he sought out the recently deceased from countless worlds he found multiple souls that fit the bill, too many in fact, so he decided to add two more criteria: first, being the same sex as the body he was going to put them in, which reduced the pool by half, and second, having a strong liking for birds, which reduced the pool again, this time by ten times, finding that it was still several hundred, Calminus decided to reduce the results to those who had an adoration of birds, which reduced the pool to less than 200, realizing that if he took much longer choosing a soul that his choices would ascend to the afterlife, he decided to change it again, this time only choosing those who literally worshipped birds, and the souls disappeared from his view. Thinking he had made a mistake, Calminus was about to undo it when he noticed there was still one soul left, Calminus pulled it to him.