Flight Time, pt. 3

She’s pushing on like she’d planned, recording on her smartwatch, planning to rate it not hard but at the high end of medium. She’s sweating a little even in the early spring rainforest chill. It’s early. She’s pushing through the light filtered by the canopies that were closing in. The trees gnarling as she continued. Ahead: an outcrop.

The blue like a bulb through the gap in the darker green road ahead and the seat from which to enjoy the view tucked away into a rocky edge opposite. She slows as she approaches and breathes in the clear sight as a meander, catching her breath. Before her the foothills south and east to the motorway then the bay then, in the distance, the city still hiding under the cover of hot air condensed to fog overnight but that fading enough to make out the spine of skyscrapers.

She’s slower to start up again than she’d hoped. A persistent habit of lethargy to begin but strong momentum as soon as she’s going. If she went again she didn’t want to stop; a calm walk not a determined one. She looks up, in the slower pace, to the canopies of the trees and her eyes follow their branches and their leaves up into the woven carpet of canopy only metres overhead. As she does, there’s a white flash that blasts through the trees in a moment like the flicker of a torch. Everything made crystal clear in the moment: bugs in the air, ants about the path, birds above. 

In the birds she sees something else as the light ends and leaves behind a glowing white outline of its shape and its features. Feathers clear apart, wings tucked behind, with clear chests and the fuzzy outline like a scan of their bones. Afraid like her, they dart and spin and take off to be safe before dazing themselves on a branch. She almost does the same but she’s stopped herself dead still.

She looks from the birds downwards and the mushrooms growing on the trees become clear with life as distinct from the thick but soft green coming from the bark. Beneath, the path shows each stone held together by uneven bitumen. In her hands her fingers seen through, the bones at the tip sharper than she expected and her knuckles strange round ball bearings. Up her arm the same. She turns and as she does she sees only a vibrant blur as some kind of colour wheel measure of all the world about her. The clearing ahead. Deep blue now like the deep sea.

At its edge she emerges slowly as if for aliens. Instead she sees the foothills fine as ever, the bay clear, but the fog blown away from the city. Her eyes drink in the azure sky bleeding through the clear hole in the clouds as the sound catches up. A soft rumbling booooooom that begins and climbs over distance like you wouldn’t believe to shake the terrified trees. Air hits the mountain and climbs up over the outcrop and up over her. Leaves fall and some cascade from the outcrop down and over, not catching in the sudden still and just diving.

She makes for the railing and grabs it tight and stands herself tall, her vision returning, the sunlight glaring in so bright she shields her eyes and she sees: smoke and grey and a funny shape in the earth miles away like a disc laid on its side. The realisation taking a moment to come to her as she regathers her wits. The anchors of the offices gone. All just flat.

Her smartwatch comes to life to tell her what she already knows. Alert, alert, alert. She’s heard about this but never seen it. She would swear later on that, in the lingering spectral sight after the bomb went off, she could see radiation falling out upon the Bay. The moment seared itself in her memory like a brand, burned in by the bright white light in the forest to never leave. She remembers her friends. Her watch still recording. She looks ahead down the path with only darkness beyond. In the brightness outside, the worst yet to happen already come to bear. 

She runs towards it.