fell

She was living on an island then. Her father, meaning well and wanting to surprise her, dug out an old seal fur cape from a trunk in the attic---it had belonged to her great-grandmother, an immigrant from another country---and sent it to her in the mail. She sighed when she opened the package and saw the translucent white fur. She decided not to chide him in a letter, even though she knew that she would never be able to bring it home again. Travelling in that direction, it would be surely be confiscated by customs agents. The laws vary from one land to another. She hung the cape in the closet of her rental apartment, where it stayed for months.

When the sea-ice broke up in spring, and the black shore was once again lapped by green-gray surf, she went out with the cape around her shoulders to the edge of the cliffs and, after pausing to draw a lungfull of morning air, leapt out into the wideness between the vault of the sky and the restless sea. She traced a long arc through the air, disappeared into the waves, and swam away.