Leaps of Faith

Photo credit here.

The trip had been long – a red eye out of LA, landing in Sydney with another 2 hour flight into the interior. We hiked another 3 hours deep into the Outback to the place locals called “The Fair.” 

 

Daylight was fading on the deep reds of the landscape and the sky looked maroon as Earth reflected Sky reflected Earth. As night crept further down the window of the horizon, a structure appeared – the original Fleur-de-lis? A rollercoaster? A statue in metal memorializing a child’s drawing of a tulip? 

 

Then people began appearing up high on the crest, down low at its base. . .

And even. . .

Upside down?

 

“I knew it,” she said, as all the weariness of travel fell away by the force of some gravity as yet unexplained. “I knew Newton was wrong!”

 

She went off on physics and Einstein and quarks and ended on string theory and the expansion and compression of time. When she finished, she looked at the rest of us stunned into the silence of the uninformed. . .

 

“Gravity,” she said, “it’s vector is just an illusion. . .” and she ran full throttle toward the structure and leapt. She swung up on the fence nearest the perilous looking curve and then walk/ran up and around the loop like Spiderwoman or a gecko or some other tiny creature for whom gravity holds little power.

 

All I wrote at the Writer’s Workshop, 4/27/25 (if I weren’t so tired, I might try to finish it, but not tonight!) The photo used for the prompt was of the structure in the picture above, but not this particular picture - though it looks cool and otherworldly in this photo (Ulrich Genth Tiger and Turtle Magic Mountain)