used to come up here a lot when I first moved out west. Charlie introduced me to it. He’s been coming to Earth’s End since he was a teenager. Not to party or anything like that, usually just to think.”
“I’m guessing there weren’t too many beer bashes on a cliff like this.”
“Or none that lived to tell about it.”
Even with his smile to temper it, Petra found Douglas’s statement unnervingly cold. She wondered if he sensed her discomfort, for he quickly changed topics.
“When you stand with your back to the escarpment you can understand why this place has always been known as Earth’s End. There doesn’t seem to be anything out there but water and sky. Go on and stare out there for a bit. It’s eerie.”
Petra heeded and focused her attention on the expanse before her, doing her utmost to shut out the rock and greenery that braced and backed her. Douglas was right: from this vantage the world seemed as distant, as fleeting as a childhood fever dream. She felt as though she were floating among the varying shades of blue, expanding and soaring through both the great empty sky and unbottomed water.
But with this, Petra felt the sky lose its comforting lustre. It revealed all the openness and emptiness of the cosmos. The dark ocean and the ghost-pale foam of its breakers suggested a pit brimming with damned spirits.
There was nothing here, nothing .
Petra’s realization of this was palpable, irrefutable. She had reached the omega point and wondered if she could ever return to the life she’d known back on Earth.
But there was something here.
A lengthier study of the vast expanse revealed an incongruity in the distance, a dark blip that disrupted the vacuum of blue. Jutting up from the Pacific, looking much like a Stone Age dagger or a granite lingam, was a mountain. It was only nominally shorter than the cliff at Earth’s End, but was far thinner, almost needle-like. It put Petra in mind of a stalagmite instead of a proper mountain.
“What’s that?” Petra mumbled.
“That,” Charlie began, his voice almost boastful as he pointed to the distant rock, “is a story unto itself.”
5
She’d met Douglas when they were students in the same first-year English Literature class at Brown University. Petra was hoping to get an English degree, but Douglas was only taking the lit. class as a breather from his engineering courses. He was, as Petra came to appreciate, as famished for love as she was.
“Sometimes,” he used to tell her, “it seems like the only way I can make any headway in life is to listen to my instinct and then do the exact opposite. How crazy is that?”
They got on right away.
Twice they’d attempted to nudge their friendship into something amorous, but both tries resulted in giggly, physically awkward evenings that ended with the pair of them trading secrets in the dark.
The summer between their first and second year of university, Douglas came to accept fully that he was gay. The night he shared this fact with Petra he had taken her for a long walk on Buttonwoods Beach. Standing on the wet sands, under a cold moon, Petra felt thrilled for him but a little sad for herself. Douglas seemed to have found his path, leaving her to bob listless and alone.
Once Douglas met Charlie while vacationing in British Columbia, his life began to move in an upward trajectory. Charlie managed to get Douglas recruited by the same Vancouver engineering firm that had headhunted him. The pair of them relocated to western Canada before Douglas had even finished his degree.
Petra traded e-mails with him now and again, not really believing that his allusions to having her out to the West Coast for a visit were anything beyond a nicety.
In April she’d written him a lengthy e-mail in which she detailed her relationship with Tad. She had tried her best to sound positive. Douglas was enthusiastic in his response, and a week later he sent a charmingly insistent message:
Petra,
I’ve had a
“I’m guessing there weren’t too many beer bashes on a cliff like this.”
“Or none that lived to tell about it.”
Even with his smile to temper it, Petra found Douglas’s statement unnervingly cold. She wondered if he sensed her discomfort, for he quickly changed topics.
“When you stand with your back to the escarpment you can understand why this place has always been known as Earth’s End. There doesn’t seem to be anything out there but water and sky. Go on and stare out there for a bit. It’s eerie.”
Petra heeded and focused her attention on the expanse before her, doing her utmost to shut out the rock and greenery that braced and backed her. Douglas was right: from this vantage the world seemed as distant, as fleeting as a childhood fever dream. She felt as though she were floating among the varying shades of blue, expanding and soaring through both the great empty sky and unbottomed water.
But with this, Petra felt the sky lose its comforting lustre. It revealed all the openness and emptiness of the cosmos. The dark ocean and the ghost-pale foam of its breakers suggested a pit brimming with damned spirits.
There was nothing here, nothing .
Petra’s realization of this was palpable, irrefutable. She had reached the omega point and wondered if she could ever return to the life she’d known back on Earth.
But there was something here.
A lengthier study of the vast expanse revealed an incongruity in the distance, a dark blip that disrupted the vacuum of blue. Jutting up from the Pacific, looking much like a Stone Age dagger or a granite lingam, was a mountain. It was only nominally shorter than the cliff at Earth’s End, but was far thinner, almost needle-like. It put Petra in mind of a stalagmite instead of a proper mountain.
“What’s that?” Petra mumbled.
“That,” Charlie began, his voice almost boastful as he pointed to the distant rock, “is a story unto itself.”
5
She’d met Douglas when they were students in the same first-year English Literature class at Brown University. Petra was hoping to get an English degree, but Douglas was only taking the lit. class as a breather from his engineering courses. He was, as Petra came to appreciate, as famished for love as she was.
“Sometimes,” he used to tell her, “it seems like the only way I can make any headway in life is to listen to my instinct and then do the exact opposite. How crazy is that?”
They got on right away.
Twice they’d attempted to nudge their friendship into something amorous, but both tries resulted in giggly, physically awkward evenings that ended with the pair of them trading secrets in the dark.
The summer between their first and second year of university, Douglas came to accept fully that he was gay. The night he shared this fact with Petra he had taken her for a long walk on Buttonwoods Beach. Standing on the wet sands, under a cold moon, Petra felt thrilled for him but a little sad for herself. Douglas seemed to have found his path, leaving her to bob listless and alone.
Once Douglas met Charlie while vacationing in British Columbia, his life began to move in an upward trajectory. Charlie managed to get Douglas recruited by the same Vancouver engineering firm that had headhunted him. The pair of them relocated to western Canada before Douglas had even finished his degree.
Petra traded e-mails with him now and again, not really believing that his allusions to having her out to the West Coast for a visit were anything beyond a nicety.
In April she’d written him a lengthy e-mail in which she detailed her relationship with Tad. She had tried her best to sound positive. Douglas was enthusiastic in his response, and a week later he sent a charmingly insistent message:
Petra,
I’ve had a
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