Chatterbox: Down to Earth

Lights Out was climbing again. It was a rocky orange cliff with few footholds and many prints of travelers who passed before. Handprints, footprints, pitons, holes, ropes, all unmistakable marks of human effort and the past climbers who'd made their own way up long ago. Lights used the marks of others, the instructions of guides no longer present to make his way up the cliff. As he reached nearer and nearer to the summit, the prints began to fade. Fewer and fewer people had climbed here. Lights eventually came to a point where the handprints had faded entirely. Lights dug his fingers into the little crags and crumbling crevices and kept climbing. He soon came to the outcrop that marked the end. Sweaty and breathing hard, Lights pulled himself over and laid there, breathing. The sky was dark. Partially night, but mostly dark cloud. Lights felt a drop hit his face. He welcomed it, letting it roll its path down the side of his cheek. Then another. Then another. Then a hundred. Then a thousand. Then a noise. Arcs of light threw themselves across the sky, and Lights lay there, awed. Perhaps if he hadn't lain so long... Perhaps if he gave up earlier... Perhaps if he had climbed back down... Maybe the bolt wouldn't have struck.

Sparks

Fire

A mask floating down a cliffside in the wind

A cough

A breath

A gasp

Life

Bruning. He felt burning. But he was alive. Lights- no. No longer Lights Out. He wasn't Lights Out any more. He was... somebody else. Who was he? He wracked his brain for the answer. A word struck him, perhaps even more powerful than the bolt.

Z

   I

O

    N

That must be who he was. He was... Zion.