[ WP ] Time and time again , you failed . Today , you succeeded .

The consensus was that the Bridge was too long to ever cross. 
 
 To the East of our town, where the trees just sort of stop growing and the smooth roads give way to dry sand, there is a canyon. Our side of the world ends at a cliff edge; a cliff that nobody has ever seen the bottom of, nor navigated their way around. There the land stops and the void replaces it. This would be enough of a peculiarity for most, but there is something stranger that can be found on that edge: the beggining of the Bridge. 
 
 A mysterious rope bridge that has always been there trails off across the canyon and into a horizon that is shrouded by a dark mist. Many have attempted to cross the Bridge in the history of our town; some of our greatest and bravest explorers have pledged to reach the other side. Maybe some made it, though none ever returned. 
 
 All accounts seem to lead to a baffling conclusion: that the Bridge is endless. Even as a child I never could believe that. One of my first memories was at age seven, standing warily at the end of the canyon, holding tentatively to one of the Bridge's rope rails and staring into the mist which devoured the Bridge from my view. I remember wondering whether another child might be stood at the other end of the bridge, a child similar to myself, and whether he might also be wondering what lay on the other end. I remember wanting to reach him; wanting to talk to him about his town and tell him about my own. I think it was at that point my obsession began; when I vowed to meet him one day. 
 
 It has been maybe seventy years since then. Maybe more. I judge this mostly by the sight of my hands, which I have watched be ravaged by time, the skin on them becoming loose and thin. They look like an old mans hands. It certainly feels like one hundred years has passed. I left my family the day before my nineteenth birthday. I ran out of food and provisions around one year in, though I never succumbed to starvation or dehydration as I made my way across the rotting and slippery wet wooden planks of the Bridge. It became my theory that the mist was somehow sustaining me; how else could I still be alive? I met people on my way, too, I'm sure of it. I think I remember doing so. I'm sure I made friends there. Kind voices that willed me on from the fog. I thought I'd died many times along the way. I considered jumping into the depths many times more. Somehow I continued. And then I saw land. 
 
 I rub my eyes; there are tears there. I see a group of people awaiting me on the other side. Perhaps word got out that a pilgram had finally made it across? I wonder what they will say. I remember the boy that I vowed to meet, and wonder what I will say to him. I continue on. I am euphoric. I am becoming tired. I rub my eyes again. I feel like I recognise the welcoming party, and I realise that this is surely impossible. There is my mother, waving to me, looking confused now as she comes rushing toward me. Impossible. She is crying, taking my shoulder, helping me back to land. The family who watched me depart, who shouted with excitment as I began my pilgramage, they are all here looking horrified. Their eyes are open and gleaming and terror brims in them, that much is clear to me. I wonder who it is they see. Do they recognise me? I collapse at the end of the Bridge, my mother and my friends all looking exactly the same as they did when I left. In their minds did I dissapear into the fog for a mere few minutes, before returning an old man? Is this really the place that I left? Everything becomes dim, and I hear the sound of my mother who I have not seen in many, many years. She is crying, and she sounds very far away. 
 
 
 ( I was going to add a few paragraphs about his previous attempts to cross, but I thought that they ultimately subtracted from the mystery of the whole thing. Or maybe not? It was a bit rushed at the end there as well- would have like to have fleshed out the middle and end sections a little more, but I wrote this on lunch at work. Sorry for going off-prompt on this one, anyway! ) 
 
 

