Feather-light

After she said it, he thought, to his own amusement, about how they say that the hardest thing in the world to do, is to find somebody who believes in you. Then he was falling, and before long he felt the ground creep back beneath his feet and then he knew he was fallen - still looking up and half-heartedly hoping to be sent back into the freckled sky. He thought the ground would come to him faster than it did, with a hollow thud and a twisting pain curling along his spine, the breath forced from his lungs, but it was feather-light and profoundly soft, as if he were pneumatically depressed. A part in him hoped he would avoid the updraft as it was easier for a feather to lay on the ground for someone to inevitably find and carry off, and that person would be the one to truly cherish it, anyhow.