Faith is closing your eyes and taking a step. You don’t know if the ground will be there until you feel it. Before that you are just falling into nothing. Stepping off a cliff that leads to nowhere. Faith is what I had when I jumped from the plane. My chute would work but I couldn’t and wouldn’t know that before it did. I jumped because I believed it would save me. The others believed that too. They all jumped like I did. The clouds covered the earth. We all had faith that it was still there. In reality it could have been gone. Just stolen away by some force greater than all of mankind. We believed otherwise. We were wrong.

The clouds became dark as we approached them. Big puffs of shadow. Through them we went. The other side gave us cause for crisis. Our faith hadn’t been rewarded. The world below us was full of fire and sound. Smoke billowed and spread and lived. From the smoke came something else. An elongated form of squirming masses reached up and snatched one of the divers out of the sky. They were pulled below the smoke in an instant. More came from the dark. They picked the other divers out of their fall one by one. I was the last still falling. The smoke just below me.

My faith was being tested. Challenged. I wouldn’t waiver. I would only adjust. I had a renewed faith and pulled my chute. It yanked back and I was floating. The forms didn’t come for me. I drifted downward and closed my eyes. The smoke choked me and my skin started to burn. I knew it would end though. And then it did. I could breathe again.

The world was still loud but I kept on believing. I would reach my feet out and feel the ground. And I did. I pulled myself out of my chute. My eyes were still closed. The ground shook around me. Thundering footsteps everywhere. They were coming. I would open my eyes soon. I knew the world would be there when I did. I had faith. Faith that it wouldn’t be my world anymore.