Author's Note

Hi all, just a quick note.

I've been in Central Australia for the past ten days, and therefore unable to update or write anything (nearly killed me) because of lack of computer access.

I apologise, but there wasn't really much I could do.

I have just put up chapter 8, but I'm afraid chapter 9 may be another week or so. School is killing me, so I really have to get on that, but I will still try to get as much done as I can.

Thanks to all who read, and even more so to all those who review. I appreciate the support.

I'd also like to thank my Beta Reader, who's been so fantastic with me, and done so much work for me. I have reposted the whole story, re-edited to fix all those silly mistakes, and clarify a few things.

Here, I have written something on my trip to Central Australia, originally written for a school assignment, then I realised it wasn't suitable as it was completely off topic.

Still, I enjoyed writing it and thought I might as well post it. If you're not interested in reading, don't bother, I don't really mind.

It's a small piece on when I climbed Uluru (Ayres Rock) and the whole experience. It contains some real and personal thoughts, so perhaps if you'd like to know more about me, then this is something to read.

Also, if you're interesting in the Australian landscape (although I feel compelled to remind everyone from outside of Oz, that generally Australia is suburban and city, rather than desert), this is quite descriptive (in my own weird way). It is also a way of practicing my narrative, as my beta suggested (you may have noticed my MI ff is mostly dialogue).

Still, no pressure. If you don't care, don't read.

Thanks again, and I'll get chapter 9 up as soon as I can.

-Jess


A Moment

The desert wasn't the red sand I had anticipated.

There was red sand, of course, but there were a startling number of trees. Some were nothing more than overgrown bushes, but others were tall, their leaves hanging around them, as if the tree were too tired to hold up it's branches. There was a lot of long yellow grass, which looked like dead weeds, but on further investigation it could be seen that it was actually still alive and growing. And then there were those trees that were black and barren, reaching up to the sky, asking for a reprieve from the sun. For me, I liked these trees the best. They had a beauty even in their death, and there had to be something said for that.

Uluru sat in the ground as if it had been placed there and was waiting for instruction. It wasn't red, I decided. It was a shade of red, orange and grey. A tone of colour, rather than a definitive colour. Though, during sunrise it was black, sunset a shade of purple, and during the rain it took on the colour of a soldier's uniform.

We were climbing it for the simple and pathetic reason it was there, and we could. Disrespectful to the Aboriginal people, yes, I was well aware, and there was a guilt in me that I had to ignore or otherwise just feel wrong. I'd overheard an American tourist telling a friend that climbing Uluru was similar to 'wearing a bikini in a Mosque', but I think that was a bit of an exaggeration.

As I pulled myself up the first slope with the chain that was placed for arrogant tourists, such as myself, I imagined some heroic movie song playing behind me. I noticed the chain was cool in my hands, which was confusing considering it had been under the Sun all day. I realised the metal had probably been chosen with that particular property. What use would I life line be if your first instinct was to let go?

I got past the first slope, and the chain ended. It wasn't as steep as I continued, and now I had a dashed white line painted onto the rock to follow. My palms began to tingle a little as I used my hands a little too often to get up a few more difficult parts, the stone scratching my skin. And Uluru was stone, rather than the red dust the pictures depict. But it wasn't smooth stone; it was ridged and looked as though someone had used a cookie cutter to remove irregular circles of rock sporadically.

I stopped at a flat ridge with a puddle of water and a few tourists. The puddle had green algae floating on the surface, small black stones making up the bottom of the small pool. I found it very strange that water was up here. I'd have thought it'd dry up in the heat.

As I was sitting, catching my breath, I dropped a small rock onto the much larger rock I was climbing. It sounded hollow. I tapped the ground with my ring, again hearing a hollow sound. Of course, Uluru is hardly hollow; it's simply made of a stone that is very aerated, the red tone coming from rusted iron in the rock.

I morbidly imagined (the one flaw of having a writer's brain) Uluru suddenly cracking open and caving into a giant chasm, me falling weightlessly into darkness with large blocks of stone. I wondered what people would do. Would they scream for help, or stand gaping at the huge gorge or falling stone and ask, "But how? It's Uluru. How can it fall?"? I suppose Uluru is one of those things that people expect to be around forever, like Michael Jackson or the Sun. Really, it's a very high expectation to have of something or something. Everything falls apart in the end. And what's left?

I'm not really scared of heights; I just always get these images of falling when I'm high up. I guess that is being scared of heights, but it's never been an issue, and it's never stopped me from doing anything. I just imagined my body slipping and falling, and I watched an image of myself fumbling down the cliff face of Uluru, until I hit my head and the vision ended. It's a bizarre quirk, I realise.

My ankle was hurting (I'd fallen on it a month or so ago), which irritated me rather than actually causing me pain. Pain had always frustrated me, making me feel weak. I knew it was irrational, because pain was there for a reason; it was warning system to tell us when something was wrong. I also knew pain was the reason I watched movies and read books on immortality and superpowers. It was the same reason I wrote.

I didn't want to die so easily. I wanted to be as strong as the werewolves, as fast as the vampires and as careless as the faeries.

Of course, all the characters I wrote about hated their immortality, which made me wonder how I would feel if I actually were immortal.

I often wonder how I would react in certain situations, an emergency or a crisis. I see myself as calm, cool and calculating. I see myself saying things like, 'Right, everyone remain clam, we need to find a way out of here,' or 'Pass me that knife, I will perform a tracheotomy with no training at all.' Which, I understand is ridiculous; especially considering my defence mechanism is to make sarcastic, cynical and inappropriate jokes.

My heart was beating in my right ear as I looked out over the horizon. It was flat, except for a few other rock structures also asking for attention. The top of Uluru was amazing, I'll admit, full of rolling ridges of stone and erratic puddles of dark water. There were even a few small trees and weeds, of which I asked why in the hell they'd choose to make this place their home.

I felt like I was closer to the Sun, it sitting above me brightly, competing with the Moon. There were so few clouds, I could've counted them, and the wind was soft and slow around me. The sky was a pastel blue and a dull half Moon had risen, as if daring the Sun to go down and face the eventual night. I could easily imagine Ancient Greek Gods floating around on clouds of mist.

If it weren't for the hordes of tourists, I could almost imagine being alone, but of all the things I could see in my head, it was being alone that was the most difficult. Honestly, I was surprised by how many overseas tourists came to this nothingness of Australia. Sure, I loved Australia, but I was Australian, and it was a given – and anyway, I preferred the cities in Australia. I loved Melbourne more than anywhere in the world – and I've been to a few cities.

There were a few American tourists, but mostly there were European backpackers. I'd met a few Canadians that spoke French between themselves, but English with an American-like accent to others. There were people from Germany, Finland, Sweden and an Irish guy had spoken to me on the way up. I'd also met up with a Japanese exchange student I'd gone to school with in Melbourne, which was pretty amazing. Of all the places to run into someone, you wouldn't have thought the top of Uluru would be one of them.

On the way back down, it was different. Quieter, I think. Following the white dashed line was easy, and I felt relaxed. But as I reached the initial slope with the chain, I realised just how steep it was. I took small awkward steps as I went down, having to bend to hold the chain. My thighs protested, and my ankle nagged at me.

When I had tripped and almost fallen too many times for my Instant-Fear trigger to handle, I sat and catch my breath. My knees were bent up at a right angle to the rock, my feet gripping the stone, as I looked down the slope to the car park.

Perhaps the Instant-Fear trigger is unclear, so I'll describe. The jolt of your heart and catch of breath. Your muscles tense, and everything happens so fast your mind doesn't even register it till it's too late, making you believe that your mind was blank, when really you just kept thinking exactly the same thing you were thinking before you tripped.

Honestly, I liked the clarity of that moment. It was almost like restarting your whole body, and made you feel awake and immortal. Ironically.

I reached the bottom, running that forced run you have to do on a not-so-steep slope. My dad was at the bottom with my youngest sister. My mum and my other sister were still on the rock, making their way down and taking too many photos.

And as much as I had complained about the emptiness of Central Australia, Uluru was truly amazing. I often said my life was boring, which was why I wrote, to get out of that life. But in that moment I decided my life wasn't boring at all. I had stories to tell.

I'd climbed Uluru in Australia.

I'd scuba dived and parasailed in Vietnam.

I'd seen the real Harajuku girls (mentioned many times in Gwen Stefani songs) in Japan.

I'd stood on top of a live volcano in Vanuatu.

I have stories, and they make me interesting. Just because I don't get wasted every weekend and steel street signs or get involved twisted love triangles, doesn't mean I'm a boring person.

After all, in the end, what do we have except our stories?

A series of moments that make up our lives.

This was one moment of my life.