A blissful sense of euphoria enveloped me like a warm blanket as I fell. I welcomed it, it was comforting, like a cup of hot chocolate and a heating system after a few hours out in the snow. After all I’d been through, after all I’d seen, it felt like I was finally home. I’d finally reached the end of my long mentally, and physically, strenuous journey.
Something in the back of my head, a presence I’d never felt before, was telling me I was safe, I was home. But another part of me, the part that realized I was freefalling 10,000 feet off a cliff without a parachute, told me I never had a home. Which was true. I’d always been on the run. My parents were on the run when I was a baby, a small child. When they died, I was on the run with my aunt. After my aunt disappeared, I was on the run. By myself.
Not anymore though. Now I was freefalling, my body blissfully slicing through the frigid night air. But I felt…happy. An unfamiliar feeling to me. In my lifetime I had rarely felt this way. Only when my father had told silly stories by the campfire, or when my mother kissed me on the forehead as she tucked me in in a safe house. Or when my aunt looked at me like I was her pride and joy. I was happy then, I knew I was. And I was happy now. But I knew I’d been pushed off a cliff. Pushed by what I’d been running from. Who knew, the source of all my fear, my parents’ fear, my aunt’s fear, my whole family’s fear, could be the source of my joy right now.
Even though I knew I only had seconds left, seconds left of life, I was happy. Maybe because, this was the only time in my short life, I wasn’t running, hiding, or scared of being found. Because they found me. Boy, did they find me. This was the end. It wasn’t the end anyone expected. I knew, I’d heard.
My parents expected me to find a better life, a safe place, a new world to live and have a family in. My aunt expected me to destroy the people who hunted my family, take each and every one of them down. She hated them, for hunting us all like animals. I spread my arms. But the only thing I’d ever expected was death. I’d always expected painful death; in my imagination I saw it from one end of a gun. But this, this real death, went above and beyond my expectations. I was proud of this death. I looked up, from where I was falling.
Everyone, every single person who had hunted my family, was up there, crowded, enjoying my death. Their mission was almost complete; the last of my family was almost dead. I was almost dead. While I was dying, they were confident. Over confident. I lifted my finger to my wrist, and pressed the rectangular, purple button on my digital watch. The cliff exploded. I smiled. No one would survive that. There would be no one left. No one left to search, or hunt, or kill. No one to know that they were wrong. That I wasn’t the last. That my baby sister was at this very moment being delivered safely to the orphanage in the town where I was born. Where everything could start over. Where a new legend could be raised.
I closed my eyes just before I hit the ground, because I knew it was over. The pain. The suffering. The joy. The hunt. My life. Everything was over. But yet, for my sister, everything was just beginning.