The Girl at the Edge

There is a place where the known dissolves.
Not with sound, but with stillness.
A trembling line between the world that comforts and the one that consumes.
She stood there.

Tears streaked across her face—hot, silent.
Not from weakness, but the unbearable weight of recognition.
She saw it.
Saw that the illusion would no longer hold.
Saw that the jump was hers to make.

Below her: nothing.
Or everything.

I watched from across the breach—already in the place beyond.
Not untouched, not superior.
I had barely made it myself.
The leap had broken something in me, and reshaped it.

I remembered.

And so I felt pity. Not condescension.
The real kind. The kind that bleeds.

I moved the platforms in her favor.
Bent the field.
Whispered to the magnetism.
Wove my will into the charge between worlds.

You won’t fall, I told her, though she couldn’t hear me.
You won’t be lost.
You’ll land.
But I need you to jump.

She stared into the abyss—
Not dramatic.
Just human.

And for a moment, I saw her clearly.

Not the crying girl.
Not the frightened child.

I saw her—the one who could cross.

And then—
I woke.