Alpas (verb): to break free, to let loose

“I-is it too late to regret?” The girl’s voice shook, every syllable of her words daunted by the stunning height before her.

Less than half a step away was a heart-dropping chasm that stretched far beyond what her poor eyes could see. She tossed a pebble that she’d found on the platform, and several eternities passed before she heard an empty thump at the bottom of the ravine.

Why did she agree to this again?

“Oh, come on,” cheered one of her friends. “It’ll be a fun time, I promise. It’s like a whole rebirth.”

“I really don’t know how I fe-”

Before she could say her last words, the bungee jumping supervisor gave her one tiny push.

And she plummeted.

As if her heart dropped into her stomach, then sank through her intestines, bone-chilling terror gripped every inch of her body as she screamed. Wind howled past her ears, almost singing an unsettling tune of her imminent death.

She reached the bottom of the fall.

Time froze as she hung helplessly upside-down, the bungee cord stretched at its maximum. Suddenly, her heart began beating again. In that split second, her body stopped in the air but her troubles and worries hurdled past her into the void below.

When she bounced back up, she was laughing with more joy than she’d ever felt in her entire life.