A/N: A teaser of my first novel Reversal. This was originally written at midnight one rainy night in January of 2011. If this story ever finds success, you can thank the notes app on my old iPod.

Snail Archer (2011)

_@v

A lone figure stood in the surging rain on a small carved stone bridge. They looked down at the dark swelling river below them as though deciding whether to jump or not. A long sigh was visible from this person, as their shoulders slumped weakly. Their breath held in a thin mist for a fleeting moment.

Such was the way of this one. With an inevitable feeling, the person lifted a leg and climbed gently up on to the handrail. Thin was this handrail, so much so one would be inclined to think one should not be able to stand on it; not with the ease this lonely figure showed.

A rumble of quietened thunder shook the air and the figure let themselves fall forward, into the raging depths below. As though in slow motion the figure flew, spreadeagled; their sodden clothes flapping, hair whipping out behind them. It was as if they were putting up a fight against this decision of theirs – as though they did not wish to simply fade away into the waters of the storm.

A flash of white lightning accompanied their sudden splash into the swollen river. No thunder followed this flash and no flash had pre-empted the first rumble. A reversal of nature, as it were, would be the significant event of this dreary evening, not the now gone figure of a lonely person who had cast themselves to the waters below that were now, for another strange event, receding.

It was as though they had merely waited for the figure to leap into their cold embrace.