Justice

I breathed in the cool mountain air as I shifted my stance. The aspen forest around me was a vibrant yellow, a horrific reminder of what I was running from. I unsheathed my kilij, my sword, my last reminder of home. The only thing left after the fire… but I couldn’t dwell on that. That was why I was here, to get away from the orphanage, the social workers, and the chaos. In these mountains, I’m usually at peace, practicing my Tai-Chi. But not today. I snorted, trying to get rid of these dismal thoughts. Quite frankly, it didn’t work.

“What am I doing…” I spoke aloud, “Just running away from them won’t help anything, they’ll find me eventually.”

A horrid part of my mind unfolded and whispered to me,

“What if you end yourself before they find you? You have your sword, and there is a cliff just to your right, It would be easy, just a little cut, or a single step, and it’s all over…”

“No”

I spoke aloud; “I would never take the cowards way out.”

I sheathed my sword, and looked around. I was on the edge of a forest, with a long cliff at the end of it. The cliff overlooked a valley full of burned, scarred tress that had recently been consumed from a forest fire. The same fire that consumed my home and my parents. My parents had me well provided for in their will, but somebody found a loophole, and the only thing left to me was what I was able to scavenge from the smoldering remains.

My sword.

“Impractical thing”, my Dad called it. “Waste of money”, my Mom called it.

But now it is the most precious thing in the world to me, because it reminds me of them. I stepped towards the edge of the cliff, as heights never scared me. I looked over the destruction laid out before me. The corruption and impurities of this world were heavy on my mind.

“I used to want to change this world, make it a better place,” I said, “But the this world chewed me up and spit me out, there is nothing left for me.”

I step closer to the edge.

“NO!”

I recoil in shock at what I was just about to do. I look down at my feet in shame.

“I really am just a coward,” I said.

Looking down at my feet on the edge, I notice something odd near the bottom of the cliff. It was like a pool of water, rippling and undulating, but it was a little above the ground. And the colors, they were strange, like a rainbow but not, too disorganized. It reminded me of chaos, and I instantly disliked it. The wind around me picked up, it is always windy on top of cliffs, but this just didn’t feel right. Suddenly I felt a strong gust of wind hit my back, more like a push, and before I could even react I was over the edge. Free-falling to the bottom, I only had time to register the weird pool of water flying towards me, before I passed through it and hit the ground… But I wasn’t dead. And I certainly wasn’t in Aspen.

A/N  Alright, this is my first story I ever wrote. It being my first, I am looking for good criticism so I can improve. I have an account on fanfiction.net under this same name, and I am just putting it here as well. I will be posting 12 chapters, (which is how many I have done atm), but after those you'll have to wait about a week between updates. I usually update on the weekend. It seems kind of choppy to me now that I've written 11 other chapters, but i hope it is still good. It will get better as it goes. At one point of the story, the character will seem to be a bit of a mary sue. This was brought up and fixed on the other site. Also, please feel free to criticize or ask questions on any of the chapters. It is a lot easier for me to edit chapters on here than on fanfiction.net, so I will be able to fix mistakes much more easily.