The Ledge (Short Story) by Bill Combs

He sat alone on the ledge, legs dangling over the edge like a child teasing gravity. Seattle spread below him, cloaked in the last violet hues of dusk. Skyscrapers reached like fingers toward the thinning clouds, and the slow blink of tower lights mirrored stars not yet visible. The hum of the city below—a symphony of sirens, laughter, and music leaking through open windows—rose to meet him, familiar and strange all at once.

The cold wind ruffled his thick coat. He didn’t flinch.

He had sat here many times before. Always at night. Always when the veil between thoughts and memories was thinnest.

He closed his eyes.

The first images that came were sharp. Painful. Human eyes wide with fear. Flashlights slicing through the dark woods. Angry voices. Barking dogs. Guns.

They had chased him. Again and again. Sometimes drunk with courage. Other times trembling, afraid of what they didn’t understand.He remembered a man screaming incoherently at the sight of him near a riverbank, falling to his knees in a religious panic. Another time, a teenage boy had thrown rocks as he fled, calling him a monster with tears running down his cheeks.

There had even been one who shot him. The bullet had lodged just beneath the skin of his shoulder—a hot, biting pain that lingered longer than it should have. He had carried that wound for weeks, too close to the city to risk moving freely, too weak to travel deeper into the mountains.

The fear was never new. It was ancient. He had seen it in generations past. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the wild. Fear of losing control.

And yet...

He opened his eyes.

Below him, a child’s voice drifted upward from an open window. A lullaby. Off-key and soft. A woman’s gentle laughter followed, wrapping the moment in a kind of fragile magic.

He remembered another sound like that. Years ago.

A little girl in the Olympic Peninsula. No more than six, her hair a curtain of gold curls. She’d spotted him from a distance, standing among the trees, half-curious, half-dreaming.

She’d waved.

Just waved.

No scream. No fear. Just the pure instinct of a soul not yet taught to be afraid.

He had smiled—something that came awkwardly, but sincerely.

She had smiled back.

Her parents had called for her, panic in their voices. By the time they turned around, he was gone.

But he remembered her. Like a flicker of light in a long tunnel of shadow.

There were others, too. Small kindnesses. A camper who left food out without knowing. A hiker who found one of his handwoven totems nestled between roots and whispered, "Thank you," as if it had been left for him. It had.

A man once fell from a ridge during a storm. He had carried him miles through the night and left him near a ranger station, unconscious but alive. He never stayed long enough to be seen, but in the weeks after, the man returned to the trail again and again, calling out into the forest. Not with threats. With gratitude.

That, too, he remembered.

So much of his life had been spent in the margins of their world—watching, listening, feeling the weight of their presence on the land. He knew their rhythms. The noise of their machines. The scarring of their roads. The scent of their oil and fire.

But also their songs. Their prayers. Their courage.

He had seen them cradle their dead, laugh with strangers, forgive things he couldn’t imagine forgiving.

Humanity was a contradiction.

Brutal and beautiful.

Frightening and full of promise.

They killed without thinking. Loved without restraint. Built great cities. Poisoned rivers. Made art that moved the soul. Cut down ancient forests to plant things that fed only themselves.

He did not hate them. He couldn't.

But he feared them, in his own way.

And he mourned what they could not see—the cost of their forgetting.

For generations, he and his kin had remained hidden, watchers in the trees, guardians of balance. They were born not only of earth and flesh, but of something deeper. Something that pulsed with the heartbeat of the wild. The old ones used to say they were woven from the first breath of the world, shaped by purpose, not accident.

Protect the green. Protect the stillness. Keep the fire from consuming the forest.

That was the oath. Silent, sacred, binding.

But the forest was shrinking. The stillness was dying.

And the fire had taken root in the hearts of men.

He sighed and shifted slightly on the ledge. The skyline below sparkled now, a constellation of glass and steel. Beautiful in its own way, but humming with a kind of nervous hunger.

They were always moving. Always wanting more.

Still... they tried.

He had watched as they planted trees in ruined parks. Rescued birds tangled in their wires. Taught their children to speak the names of things that had nearly been lost.

Even now, among their poets and wanderers, there were whispers—echoes of stories once known. The “forest spirits,” the “wild men,” the “giants of the glade.” Some still believed. Others laughed. But belief was not required. Only remembrance.

And respect.

Far below, a group of people danced on a rooftop, music drifting into the cold air like incense. He didn’t know the song, but the melody stirred something ancient in him.

Connection.

Joy.

Hope.

He rose slowly from the ledge, muscles moving with quiet power beneath his coat of fur. The city no longer frightened him. Not like before. But he knew he didn’t belong there. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Still, he felt closer to it now than he had in a long time.

The night wind curled around him, tugging at his arms like a farewell.

He looked back once more.

In another world, perhaps, he could have walked among them. Not as a myth. Not as a threat. But as a bridge between what they had forgotten and what they were meant to remember.

But for now, he would return to the wild. To the dark forests where the air still held the scent of pine and moss. Where silence reigned, and the old songs still echoed beneath the roots.

He took one last deep breath, the city’s warmth and chaos settling behind him like a memory. Then he vanished into the shadows, moving silently, powerfully—an echo of something older than their buildings, older than their fear.

Somewhere in the distance, a child’s voice laughed.

He smiled.

Perhaps the world wasn’t lost yet.

---

And as the moon rose, silver and solemn, the ledge stood empty once more.

Only a few faint footprints remained.

Large. Bare.

Unmistakable.