Prompt: 037 Fall
Character: Emily
The trees rustled as the chilly autumn wind rushed through the city. Emily pulled her jacket tighter around herself and stared up at the multicolor leaves. She always loved this time of the year, and thought the trees were always so pretty. It was a kind of natural beauty that was never captured right in pictures or paintings. The kind of beauty that could only be truly understood in person.
Emily loved to immerse herself in the sea of colors, which was why she'd climbed this tree. The young woman had settled into a crook in the branches and was just enjoying the calm. When she'd been a kid, Jason had always told her not to climb trees. He always said that one day she'd fall and break her neck, but she had yet to lose her footing. Jason had just been a worry wart and never wanted her to do anything dangerous. She'd always felt it was hypocritical that he would tell her not to climb trees, while he had owned a motorcycle. It almost seemed ironic that he'd spent all his time worrying about her safety, and he was the one who had died.
Her music stopped and she pulled her music player from her jacket pocket. Emily searched through her list of albums before finding one that seemed ideal and fit what she felt like listening to at the moment. She hit shuffle and slipped her music player back into her pocket. Heavy drums and fast guitar pounded in her ear and Emily closed her eyes. She had to be careful or she might fall asleep, and she could fall out of her place if she did. She thought of trips to the park with her brother and her father on one of the rare occasions he'd had time off. She missed those days, and her family. Her grandmother was a good person, but she had never been the very attentive and she seemed to have no real interest in raising a granddaughter. But Emily didn't care; she only needed her grandmother to provide shelter, and as soon as she was old enough she'd be out of the woman's hair.
Emily opened her eyes and stared out at the sky. The sun was going down and she decided that she better leave her perch. Emily slid from her spot and slowly started to climb down the tree. She had gotten almost all the way down, when a branch suddenly snapped under her foot. Her hands slipped and the bark in her other hand tore free from the tree. She felt weightless as she fell, and at the same time helpless. The falling feeling was both thrilling and terrifying all at once. It would have been exciting if she wasn't worried about the ground below.
She never hit the ground, instead hitting something soft and warm. Her savior groaned as he hit the ground with her weight on top of him. Emily looked over to the man who had broken her fall before quickly getting off of him. "I'm so sorry'" she said, scrambling to her feet. She was embarrassed for falling, and for needing to be saved.
The man stood up and rubbed at his back. "No problem. I'm just glad I was fast enough. Are you hurt at all? That was a long way down." He smiled, but there was something about it that seemed off to Emily.
"I'm fine; I just hope you didn't get hurt. I should have been more careful." Emily looked away from him and toward the ground. "Oh, thank you."
The man shrugged. "It was just luck. I had just been running past when I saw you fall. Guess fate didn't want you to die today." She could hear the smile on his voice but for some reason it still sounded a bit forced. Maybe she was just paranoid and suspicious of strangers, but he had saved her.
"So what's your-" Emily stopped as she looked up and found that he was gone. She looked around but found no sign of the man. Emily frowned, wondering if she had just imagined him; but if that were true then she couldn't explain how she was unhurt by the fall. She sighed and realized that her music had stopped again. She pulled out her music player and cursed when she saw the cracked screen. Great, how was she going to explain that to her grandmother? She stuffed the device into her pocket and set off for home.