Put Me in Coach!

While the midwinter sun embarked on its westward journey across the horizon, Jermaine Whitehorse crashed through the forest outside Carillon Point with a zealous intensity. He ran eastward, barely flinching as tree branches whipped across his cheeks, leaving welts crisscrossing his face, each one registering in his mind as a sharp, burning pain. Jumping over rotting stumps covered in mosses and grubs, and tearing through thorned shrubs, Whitehorse plowed onward as if he had nothing to risk, except for failure of his mission. As he burst out of the eastern side of the forest and slid down a fallen log dripping from the spray of a nearby waterfall, Whitehorse paused for the first time, looking around frantically as he caught his breath and searched for an exit from the small ledge overhanging the Atlantic that he found himself on. Seeing no escape, Whitehorse turned around to go back the way he came, and at that moment, the sun flashed as it sank below the horizon, illuminating Whitehorse's face for a brief interval. His long white dreadlocks and his knotted beard were full of leaves and thorns and tangles, and his leathery brown face still dripped with blood from the cuts he had suffered in his mad easterly dash. But behind his haggard appearance, his eyes, which constantly darted desperately in every direction, suddenly focused and gained an incredible resolve, as he turned his face back towards the darkness and grasped the golden crucifix that hung around his neck. With a burst of energy, his darkened silhouette ran and threw itself off the ledge and into the night, and at the apex of his jump, the last gleam of the sun caught his body for a split second, causing a tangible glow to appear around him before he plummeted into the sea.

The next morning Jermaine Whitehorse woke up on one of the docks outside Carillon Point, alone and naked, with only his crucifix still firmly clenched in his fist. He looked around, and looked down at himself. His beard and hair were completely clean and the blood had been washed off his face by the sea. He then stood up, strung the cross back around his neck, and turned westward, to head into the city. Behind him, the sun rose, shining only on his back, as he walked towards his new mission.