#my ‘tan’ right now is at least a scale above corpse

[simplyghosting]

Every time I’m called a ghost irl by a non-tumblr user I gain additional power.

[whirlybirbs]

MOONLIT DUNES.    ;    boba fett / reader     ;     1 / ?

summary: you’ve found many things in the dunes. a gravely injured mandalorian is a new thing to add to the ever growing list. set directly after return of the jedi. 

word count: 3.5k

pairing: boba fett / scavenger!reader

tags: some body horror, injury mention, boba loses his leg, reader does first aid,  the great pit of carkoon really did one on our man

a/n: my hand slipped i swear.............. (this has been in the works since may)

In all your years spent drifting about the land of Tatooine, you’ve found many things in the dunes.

Rare racing pod parts that had been discontinued after years of upgrades... Discarded weaponry, no doubt used for something more nefarious than Bantha hunting... and many, many skulls, sentient and otherwise.

Such comes with the life of a scavenger — live off the land and the things buried deep; harvest trinkets of lives long since forgotten in the ever changing tides of glittering sand.

However, never in your life —  in all the days spent beneath the twin brother suns —  have you ever found someone alive in the dunes.

Until today, that is.

You should have known venturing North of Mos Eisley was a bad idea. After all, the plains beyond the space port were ridden with starved sarlacc pits. But, with Tanto — the resident Junk Boss — down your throat about catching up on your few owed debts, you’d decided to weigh the risk and trek on towards the looming beast on the horizon: the Great Pit of Carkoon. With any luck, you’d be able to scavenge what little undigested pieces the massive creature had belched back up — maybe some Gamorian armor, or a blaster or two — after one of Jabba’s usual disposal runs.

Ah, Jabba.

Rumor had it that Jabba Desilijic Tiure was dead.

You knew better than to ask about mere rumors being tossed around the clock-out lines as you turned in your hauls for the day. Like you did every evening, you kept your head down. But, you did listen. You always listen — and from what you could gather, there’d already been a few scavenging parties dispatched to the Northern region.

Something about a jedi, a princess and a hell of a mess.

Not that any of that mattered — because dwelling on some fantastical retelling of a lie by Frokop Golp, the resident drunk swindler, wasn’t going to keep you fed. You were hoping that at the least, the part about one of Jabba’s sail barges going down by the Great Pit of Carkoon wasn’t a lie. Then, you could maybe find a few transistor coolant coils...

The dawning realization that you were betting another day’s ration portion on a spun half-truth embellished by the local drunkard hits you as your dewback, a kindly older male you’d named Scud, finally reaches the crest of the highest dune overlooking the Carkoon wastes. For a moment, as you squint into the setting sun, you wonder if this is even going to be worth it.

You sigh, adjusting the light linen face covering over your nose and mouth, and gently urge Scud forward.

No use in dwelling. You’re already here.

“Hup.”

As you near, the wreckage seems to have been picked over completely. Scud plods slowly towards the wreck, tail swatting cautiously as the sarlacc a few meters ahead gives a low hiss at the vibrations riling it awake through the sand. You rock with the slow canter, one hand on the horn of the saddle and the other moving to reach behind you to your pack.

There rests a longspear — the top is crowned with the head of a gaderffii. You’d made it ages ago, well before your fifteen birthday, and it had become as much as a steadfast companion as Scud himself. With a flick and a satisfying click, the longspear extends from it’s compacted state. Resting the butt end against your forearm as Scud continues his meandering pace, you run the spear tip through the sand to your left.

No give.

The dunes creating a wall around the beast’s mouth stand strong. Over the large ridge, and a handful of meters away, tentacles swing eagerly through the air like malicious little whips, hungry for their next meal. The hulking beast, well over 10,000 years old, knows you’re here now — the desperate moan from it’s gaping maw is enough of an indication of that fact.

For now, keeping your distance and guiding Scud towards the barge, you’re safe.

The party barge had certainly seen better days — seems like a bolt from the main gun had ruptured a fuel line below the deck. Half submerged in an encroaching dune, you’re not surprised to be greeted by the foul stench of sun-rotting corpses as you hop down from Scud. Your boots, made of stretched and tanned Bantha hide, kick up a cloud of dust when you land.

Even with the twin suns beginning to set, the sand is hot.

There are footpaths leading to the barge, partially washed away by the wind pulling the sand closer to the mangled helm of the ship. Patting Scud’s neck as you pass, you grip your staff tightly — one tap of the durasteel spear to the twisted hole in the starboard side sends a scattering hiss of a pack of womp rats caught lounging in the evening shade. Carefully, you duck beneath the warped siding and over the lip of metal, eyes flicking around the cavernous sail barge.

The engine room is where you find yourself… or, well, what’s left of it. The engine has since bottomed out of the barge, no doubt laying in the dunes a few meters away. The smell of propulsion liquid burns in your nostrils, even with your white linen head-covering wrapped tight across your face.

You move on, hauling yourself towards the engine and grabbing two of the smaller propulsion pistons from the transmission. You swing your staff across your shoulder. The strap digs into your neck as you lean into the engine and try to disconnect the main hydraulic line from the engine part.

There’s a part of you, small and girlish, that remembers being scared of dark wreckages like this when you were younger. The terrifying scenario of stumbling into a krayt dragon’s nest used to play over and over in your head; and even now, the irrational little thought nags the back of your mind like a bite from a sand flea. What was rumbling beneath the sand, ready to make you its next meal?

In reality, the most likely scenario would be Tusken scouts roughing you up over encroaching on their territory.

Scud, though, you trusted enough to give holler at the sight of another being — skittish was one of his best traits, especially when sometimes the biggest danger out here in the dunes (aside from sarlaccs) was other sentients.

If the Kiqan tribe spotted you this far out? At worst, you’d lose some of the scavenged parts from earlier in the day as a barter. The Kiqan, the tribe local to this region, knew well enough that the majority of scavengers meant well. Unlike some of the tribes native to the Western lands, the Kiqans have come to terms with the traffic coming in and out of Mos Eisley.

Their chief, a broad and strong woman called Rhaza’hoq, led a clan of twenty Tusken men and women. On more than one occasion, you’d crossed paths with her — you’d come to recognize the womp rat jaw as a part of her head covering and a pelt of bantha donning her shoulders. Though their native tongue felt wrong to you, like prying dry sounds right from your throat, you’d tried to apologize for your trespass.  

That seemed to have been enough respect garnered for the chief to allow you to pass through the Bo’mar Flats in peace. You’d even offered up an armful of rifle components as a gesture of good faith — one you haven’t regretted since.

If they were to catch you here, you’d lose a good lump sum of money. The two battered sheets of durasteel strapped to the side of Scud, each four feet by four feet, would catch a fair price at the Junkyard in Mos Eisley. So, you quietly resign your attempt to dislodge the third propulsion piston and shoulder the two others. Your sack swings heavily against your hip as you plant your boot on the lip of the engine and reach through the hole the ignition blast caused in the floor.

Almost as immediately as you haul yourself up do you regret it.

The smell is wretched, and as you cough and gag you can’t help but recoil in disgust.

Your arrival on the main floor of the sail barge brings with it the cacophonous sound of cave beetles wings; the insects scatter as you press your forearm to your face — you’re left only to stare in horror at the sight before you.

Jabba Desilijic Tiure was very dead.

The infamous Hutt is little more than a snack for the various animals who have come and gone from the wreckage, now. Reduced only to a rotting mess of flesh and bones, you feel the swell of bile creep up into your throat as you tear your gaze away.

“Gods above,” you heave, coughing loudly.

That’s when you hear it.

A weak sound.

A strangled moan.

Small, quiet, and nearly nothing but a whimper.

For a moment, your muscles seize up so tightly that you're left holding your breath — was that you? Had that sound slipped from your throat the moment you’d let your eyes slip to the open windows along the starboard side of the ship, overlooking the Great Pit beyond the dune ridge?

Then, you see him.

It’s the single weak raise of a gloved hand in the dirt that spurs you into motion.

Scud, too, in that moment must have realized you both weren’t alone — he gives a great baying moan as you scramble, slipping through the whole and back down the engine. You scale it with ease, staff swung over your shoulder at the ready the moment your boots hit the ground.

You dart out into the sun, escaping the festering wreck, and bolt towards what you had previously thought was just a mangled, twisted piece of a rear booster. Making your way up the rising dune, you groan and push your muscles to reach what you now recognized as a destroyed jetpack — and beneath it, a man.

Your spear greets his body first, rounded butt end planting itself beneath his side and with one good nudge, rolling him over.

That’s when you realize he is very much alive and he is very much missing a leg.

Almost immediately, you sink to the dirt.

He’s big. His chest bears a cracked and scathed piece of armor. One arm, with a tattered sleeve and no glove, bears a shoulder pauldron with an insignia long since charred away. It seems like the entire left side of his body had been scorched by some sort of blast. His jetpack, mangled and shredded, is the first to go. You unbuckle the straps along his arms with an utterance of apology.

You’re greeted with a low groan. Slight protest.

Confusion.

His eyes do not open. Swollen eyelids stay shut.

Clicking your tongue and hollering in Huttese, your lumbering dewback trods closer.

His face is sunburnt, the plains of his sharp cheekbones blistering from the exposure to the sun and sand — though, something ticks in the back of your mind. These burns are fresh. From the last day at least. Suddenly, you’re wondering if he’s a fellow scavenger who’d fallen into the pit.

The jetpack would explain the escape.

You toss the pack down the hill.

You follow it, tripping down the sand towards the side of Scud as you scramble for one of the durasteel sheets. Laying it flat on the hot sand, you wonder how on earth this man had survived this long…. A day at least, judging by the sand swept around him and the burns along his arms and face. How long had he been in The Pit?

Gods above.

The Bo’mar Flats were not a kind place when left to the elements.

You land beside the man once more, this time speaking loudly.

“I am going to help you.”

You’re not sure if you’re saying it more for yourself or him.

There’s a part of you, as your eyes flick down to the stump of his left leg, that would give anything to turn away. Ride off, forget the gorish scene. Yet, the better part of you knows you’d simply come back come morning and do the same thing you’re doing now.

And then, come daybreak, he may not even be alive.

You tell yourself, as you squat and try and get a good grip, that you’re doing exactly what anyone else would do. But the reality is that’s far from the truth. Out here, it’s eat or be eaten.

With your luck, you’re stumbling into a metaphorical krayt dragon’s nest helping this man.

If only you knew.

You root both your fists in the material around his shoulders, worn enough to show the outline of where armor used to sit. And you pull.

It’s no easy feat. Even with gravity working in your favor, you’re struggling to haul the large man down the dune. The sand simply drags along, digging him into the dune as you curse in Huttese and spit out profanities sharp enough to make Scud shift on his peds. Your knuckles ache, fingernails having dug half moons into your palms through the material of his under-armor tunic. Landing backwards, you curse. But, you get back up again, and you pull.

It takes ten minutes to move him two meters to the durasteel sled downhill — and even longer to maneuver him onto the steel piece of scavenged material. By the end of it, you’re prying your scarf from your mouth to breath. Sweat tickles the back of your neck as your hands hit your knees and you groan.

“Koochoo,” you hiss at yourself in Huttese. Idiot is right. This is stupid.

Throughout this, the wounded man has offered nothing, not a single peep — you wonder if his last ditch hail of his hand was the only bit of energy he had left.

With him now on the makeshift sled, you move towards Scud’s left pack. Inside, you dig out your canteen and a spare bacta pack. The water sloshes around the hollow metal sphere. Once cold from your early hour of embarking, it’s warm to the touch.

It’s been a hot day.

Overhead, the twin suns have melted into a hazy coral color. They hang low across the horizon, suspended in a flickering bob of heat that dances across the clouds.

You fall to your knees in the sand. You need to move quickly. Soon, the sun will set and getting back to your hut just north of Mos Eisley is an hour’s ride at best.

The lower part of his left leg, from the knee down, is gone. The bleeding had long since stopped, clotted up from the sand and what looks like corrosive burns… Sure enough, the same patterning around his wrists tell you he sure as all kriff has been in the belly of the Great Pit of Carkoon. It’s the stomach acid that has melted the skin together just enough to halt the bleeding along his knee.

You exhale. Short and quick. Then, you pour your water across the limb.

That earns a loud groan of protest. Good to know he’s still alive.

The bacta is next, squeezed from the age old tube in a glob that lands above the wound. With an iron gut and quick sense of criticality, you rinse your own hands with water, all before holding your breath and pushing the palm sized amount across the mangled flesh and muscle. You try not to think about the way your own knee twitches, and instead, focus on planting your hand on the man’s chest — for the first time, he gives a true indication he feels it. The man writhes, contorting himself as a painful series of expletives fly from his mouth.

The chest plate buckles slightly, and when you lift your palm, the dirt smeared away shows a small emblem… Tan and green and red. What looks like wheat and a drop of blood…

It’s familiar, but you can’t remember why. You’ve seen it somewhere. Chewing the inside of your lip, you tear your eyes away and you move on. In a flash, you’ve hauled the linen head wrap from your hair. With the sun setting, you won’t need it as much as he will — keeping the sand out of the clean-enough wound will make a difference once you get him back to your home.

A part of you wonders if this man has any credits at all — truth be told you certainly don’t have enough to cover a visit to the local doctor. As you finish tying off his thigh, you reason that conversation is a bridge you can cross when you get there. For now, let’s just hope you can get him back to your dwelling alive.

Away from this wretched wreck.

By the time you’re mounted back up on Scud’s back, the suns have begun to dip below the dunes on the farthest horizon — the stars melt as they disappear, casting the shadows of the dunes in inky blacks. Behind Scud, the stranger is dragged, rigged to the saddle by two extending cables originally scavenged off an abandoned pod-racing setup, out by Bestine. The plating he rests on glides across the sand, leaving patterns in the dunes. You crane your neck, turning in the saddle, and frown.

There was certainly a first for everything.

⋆   ⋆   ⋆

Boba Fett wakes to the sight of a dirt ceiling.

The stirring confusion of unconsciousness subsides and almost immediately he is roused by pain — then comes the startling panic.

Is he dead?

Where is he?

What in the hell happened?

This is not the barge; there is no Luke Skywalker here, nor Solo nor the Wookie... The Pit… He’d fallen in. Yea, yea, he remembers that. But, he got out. Jetpack punctured. Flew him straight into the air. Burns. That’s the pain he feels. Burns? Yes. His back.

His leg. Something feels different. An ache. He tries to move his feet.

Boba groans, angled features contorting into a pained look as he tries to sit up on the cot; but suddenly, there’s a hand on the center of his chest. Gently, the hand pushes him down to the pillows.

Slowly, dark brown eyes follow the hand. Wrist, arm, shoulder, face.

Headscarf.

The first thing he realizes is that your eyes are beautiful, but soft. There’s kohl lining your eyes, making your stare piercing. Your brows are knotted in concern, and though he cannot make out the words that fall from your lips, he can understand the tone to be gentle. You’re speaking Huttese.

… Gods damn it all.

The Hutts.

Jabba.

Son of bitch was probably dead. He’s sure that the Desilijic Clan will have something to say about that.

Boba’s eyes slip shut as he exhales.

Sleep takes him easily.

⋆   ⋆   ⋆

When he wakes again, it’s evening. There are candles burning in the room, and once his eyes adjust he can make out your figure through a blanket covering the doorway at the end of the room — through the crack, he can see that you’re cooking over a small stove-top. He is laid up in the bedroom, he realizes, and on the floor across from the cot he lays upon is a pile of pillows.

You must have been watching over him.

Instantly, he’s looking for his blaster.

Call it a habit.

The mere act of bending sends pain shooting up his spine; and Boba finds himself gritting his jaw tightly as his knuckles tense and he tries to see any remnants of his armor or pack or weapons.

The commotion summons you in a flash.

This time, you have no headscarf on; Boba can now see the swell of your lips and the kind slope of your nose. You’re beautiful — his bruised and bloodshot eyes follow you as you glide into the room and duck beneath the patterned blanket separating the bedroom from the kitchenette.

There’s a plate of food in your hand. A fork and a knife rest on the edge of the painted plate.

“Careful,” comes a gentle utterance as you place the food beside his head on the table there, “Take it easy.”

Your basic is dashed with the light accent of Huttese. The syllables are melodic and gentle. You reach to help him into a sitting position, keen on making sure he’s comfortable —

Like a sand viper, the man before you has snatched the knife from the plate, swinging his hand quickly with a lethal sense of precision that stuns you silent. The coolness of the durasteel utensil is pressed right to your throat.

You can see the muscles in his arms tense, the sharp rise and fall of his bare chest. The blanket across his lap has slipped to his waist. Your jaw tilts upward, expression souring quickly. The kindness in your eyes quickly turns to ice.

When you raise your eyes to meet his, all Boba can see is defiance.

“Who are you?” he grits out hoarsely, “And how did I get here?”

“I found you,” you hiss, words scathing and hot as you raise both hands. There’s a wrinkle forming on the bridge of your nose, giving way to the angered expression flooding your face, “I’m beginning to see why The Great Pit of Carkoon spat you back up.”

The tension that builds settles heavily between you both.

And then, Boba Fett lowers the knife.

[ecotone99]

[RF] The Abandoned Trail at Graiken --- Seeking Critique

It was the afternoon. Charlie was lying in bed with his big headphones on listening to music. But he’d worn out those songs already from repeat listening, so he hit Skip. He tried listening to some new stuff, but he just wasn’t in the mood. After hitting Skip another ten times he finally gave up.

He was mind numbingly bored. And most of all, he was tired of being alone. He’d been basically by himself for the past two weeks. It was the middle of July, so there wasn’t any school. And he was between friends. He was tired of the few friends he had in Grade 6. They always picked on him, so he didn’t want to see them anymore. And he had made a good new friend, Sam, but he left on a trip to Tulum with his family two weeks ago. There wasn’t much to do here in Graiken, especially without a buddy.

Charlie finally took his headphones off. He laid there, staring at the ceiling, looking at the weird bumpy texture caused by how it was painted. Without moving from his bed, he glanced out the window. It looks like a scorcher outside. At least I have air conditioning in here…

He heard a knock on his bedroom door. He sighed internally. It was probably his mother coming to nag him about some menial chore that he’d have to do.

“Yes?” said Charlie.

The door abruptly swung open.

Charlie did a double take. It was his friend Sam, but he was much more tanned than when he had last seen him.

“You’re back!” exclaimed Charlie.

“Hell yeah,” said Sam. “As you can see from my tan, Latin America was good to me. I definitely want to go back there.”

Lucky for you, thought Charlie. Meanwhile, I’m stuck here in the hillbilly backwater of the country with shit all to do.

“Cool,” said Charlie. “Let’s go do something.”

#

In Graiken, there was much more worry of an animal eating your crops than of a person robbing your home. Most people kept their doors unlocked. There was hardly any supervision for kids, or for much of anything. So Charlie and Sam were free to roam about the green and golden fields.

Charlie didn’t see it that way though. He was born in Graiken, so this was all too normal to him. He truly knew the place like the back of his hand. Being particularly restless that day, Charlie rejected all of Sam’s suggestions to go to their usual spots.

#

Finally, Sam suggested something out of the ordinary. “What if we climbed that?” he asked, looking at Mount Cambria in the distance. It looked majestic and powerful, a great blue triangle of rocks pointing to the sky.

“Oh, yeah…” started Charlie, “I guess we’ve never been there before… but, isn’t it dangerous? Nobody goes there anymore after that climber died there.” Though he would never admit it, he really identified with that climber. Charlie knew that he was a bit of klutz and inattentive. He could easily have had the same fate as the climber, he thought.

“Yeah,” said Sam, “but that’s so overblown. He was just a dummy trying to scale cliffs with his bare hands, no bungee cord or anything. Thought he was Tom Cruise at the start of M:i-2 or something. Pretty brain-dead thing to do if you ask me.”

Despite Charlie trying to hide it, his face was always an open book, so Sam could see Charlie doing the mental calculus in his head. Charlie realized that he’d basically walked himself into this one after having rejected all the normal activities. And he definitely couldn’t afford to look like a pussy in front of his only real friend.

“Alright,” Charlie managed to get out finally, “let’s do it.”

#

By the time they reached Mount Cambria, the back of Charlie’s neck was redder than a tomato (being the absent-minded genius that he was, he hadn’t even thought of putting sunscreen on). He’d at least remembered to bring lots of water though. He’d filled up an empty 4L milk jug with water, so that was pretty heavy in his backpack.

There was no signage at the mountain. Graiken wasn’t a place that tourists visited at all, and hardly anyone lived there, so even before the dare devil climber lost his life two years ago, hardly anyone went to the mountain, and now, after his widely publicized death, it was basically abandoned.

So there wasn’t a gravel trail, or stairs, or anything to make the trail a smoother experience. The trail was just wherever people had walked repeatedly before. Sam and Charlie tried to follow it as best they could with the assumption that those people had gone the right way. Climbing was a pleasurable strain on their legs, and the trees brought some shade for them.

As they gained altitude, the air became fresh and pine-scented, but the trail also became harder to follow. There was lots of overgrowth, so Charlie ended up bumping his head painfully on a protruding tree branch.

#

After about two hours of climbing, the trail just stopped. They had to invent their own path upward now. They had to think more clearly about their surroundings—how would they safely cross over this spot? how did they know that they were going the right way? But they didn’t think of turning back.

#

“Hey, see that?” said Sam. Charlie took a closer look. There was a little carving in the bark, probably done with a pocketknife.

It read:

ALMOST THERE

!!!

— J. F.

#

Sam, smiling, evidently took this as good news, but Charlie wasn’t so sure. It seemed to him that they still had a ways to go before reaching the top. Maybe this J. F. guy was pulling their leg. It was definitely comforting to know though that some other human being had crossed the path they were now on. It made Charlie a little more confident that they were heading in the right direction.

Sam moved forward with renewed vigor and speed, so Charlie had to work harder to keep up with him.

#

They reached an expanse of large rocks. Sam hopped across them nimbly like a mountain goat.

Charlie tried to copy his movements, but his foot landed on one of the rocks at a weird angle. His ankle buckled, and he fell.

It was weird though because his right leg didn’t hit the ground. It fell down a hole or something: a crevice. Charlie let out a bit of a yelp in shock and pain.

Sam turned around and looked. Charlie’s leg was stuck up to his thigh. He saw Charlie’s discomfort and shock on his face turn into outright fear.

“Dude, there’s something crawling on my leg!” yelled Charlie. He shook his leg back and forth desperately. His erratic movements made him slip further down the crevice. Now he was stuck at his hip.

Why am I such a loser? he thought.

“Whatever’s on your leg,” said Sam, “just don’t think about it, okay? You can’t move your leg at all! I’m gonna pull you up now. Give me your hands.”

Charlie was trying to push himself up against the ground with his hands. Worried about falling further down the crevice, he hesitated to take his hands off it. After a few moments he finally took his left hand off and raised it up. Sam grabbed it and pulled. “Both hands, c’mon.” Charlie carefully gave him his other hand.

Sam pulled as hard as he could. All the while Sam was pulling, Charlie was struggling not to freak his leg out again. The insects were crawling all over his leg. There were lots of them too.

“Focus Charlie,” said Sam. “Let’s get you out of there.” He pulled hard and Charlie tried to shimmy his torso loose from the crevice. Suddenly, enough force was applied that Charlie popped up, finally unstuck, so that his hip was above ground. It was bloody painful on the way up though. His hip bone scraped up against the crevice on the way out, leaving a gash. Charlie gritted his teeth.

Now that Charlie was further up, Sam could let go of him. Charlie managed to pull himself up and out finally, and he rolled over past the crevice and lied on his back on the ground. Now he could see that it was ants on his leg. Probably twenty ants were just crawling all up and down his leg, even walking around on the the gash by his hip.

Despite barely having gotten his breath from the exertion of pulling himself out of the crack, this freaked the hell out of Charlie. With fearful fury, he swiped his hand all the way down his leg repeatedly.

Most of the unwelcome insects were successfully launched off his leg, but a two crawled their way onto his swiping arm. One of them was speeding towards him, evidently having his shoulder in mind as the destination. He aimed his sights on that one, and readied his right hand to smash it, hovering his hand over it, waiting for the ant to reach a certain point on his arm, but in the middle of that, the other ant bit him! Caught completely off guard by the sudden pain, he ended up missing the speedy ant and just smacking himself in the arm.

But now he was just more furious and determined to destroy both of the ants. Since the other ant was biting him, it was easy to locate it. He found it and smashed it.

The other was crawling up his neck now. He frantically swiped it off, and thank God, it didn’t stick to his hand but launched off him and onto the ground.

The speedy ant followed a line of the other ants, back down to its subterranean home down in the crevice. He supposed that there were some tunnels down there, some kind of ant colony. He shuddered to think that there were probably a few thousand of the things down there.

Charlie looked at the corpse of the ant who had bitten him with grotesque satisfaction. It was flattened like a pancake, it’s legs twitching. He flicked the vermin off of his arm, happy that he could end its insignificant life.

“Damn dude! You destroyed that thing!” said Sam.

Charlie smiled, relieved that he wasn’t being chastised for his stupidity and clumsiness at falling into the crack.

Sam opened up Charlie’s backpack and hauled out the big jug of water. He came closer to Charlie, who was still on the ground. Charlie had multiple wounds on his body. He had a cut on his hip (you could actually see a bit of blood stained into his shorts) and he had the ant bite on his arm. “Dude, you’re bleeding there,” said Sam. “Let me clean it.”

Charlie was uncomfortable and felt vulnerable.

“C’mon,” said Sam, “you don’t want it to get infected.”

Reluctantly, Charlie pulled his shorts down half an inch, just enough to reveal the gash on his hip. The blood was clotting (good) but there was a lot dirt mixed in.

Charlie winced when Sam poured the water on the cut. It was freezing cold. He’d forgotten that he’d thrown a bunch of ice cubes into the jug at home before leaving.

Sam patted the wound dry (or as dry as can be when you’re bleeding) with his shirt. It was much cleaner now. He repeated the process with the bite on his arm.

He got up, put the jug in Charlie’s backpack, and held out his hand to help him up.

#

Charlie didn’t feel like moving, but he grabbed Sam’s hand nonetheless and managed to get up. He was standing now, unassisted, but he looked roughed up and tired. Sweat was all over his forehead, and his expression was one of discomfort, though he tried to hide it.

“Do you want to turn back?” asked Sam.

Charlie paused for a second.

“Screw that. Apparently we’re almost there.”

Sam was a little taken aback. It will probably hurt for him to walk, let alone hike up a mountain, he thought.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Let’s do it. It’s all worth it if we make it to the top.”

#

Though Charlie had a bit of limp now, he didn’t complain as they headed further up the mountain. When they came to some tough patches that were hard to traverse, Sam gave him some assistance by putting out his hand or letting Charlie lean on him for support.

#

An hour later, they had finally made it to the summit. J. F. didn’t lie.

Of course, there was no one there. Just Sam, Charlie, the mountain, and a glorious view.

They found some decently flat rocks to sit their bums on. Any seat was a good seat after a climb. Charlie was especially relieved.

His mother had made them some turkey sandwiches which she had insisted that he take for the both of them. They were both hungry as sin, and thirsty too. They were actually pretty tasty.

As they ate their sandwiches and drank up, they looked out at the awe-inspiring view. They were so high up that it felt like they could see everything in all directions. They could see thousands of trees, huge stretches of land, all bathed in golden sunlight.

And it was all beneath them. If they moved just a foot forward from the rocks they were sitting on, they would certainly fall to their death, and their flesh would rot, and no one would ever see or hear from them again. Maybe they’d be in the paper, known as the foolish kids who went up the dangerous and cursed Mount Cambria, but it wouldn’t take long for them to be forgotten completely. Charlie realized that he wasn’t much different from an ant. Ultimately, we are all mortal, and relatively powerless compared to the might of the earth.

But it wasn’t a sad feeling at all. It made him feel naked. Naked before God.

#

After they had absorbed some of the vastness of the Earth, and refreshed themselves with the cold, pure water from the jug, Sam cracked some jokes, and they started heading back down the mountain.

Though Charlie took extra care not to slip and fall again, he was calm all the way back. He knew that no matter what, Sam would have his back. And he felt a new strength, deep within himself, that could never be denied or stolen by anyone.

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