endless night ✓

Once he comes to his senses, he rises from his bed of thorns and roots.

Around him there are phantoms of white noise, raging in waves that echo in the ageless night, and wind that starts in the top of the enormous trees and dies the lower it gets, ending in a slight breeze that ruffles his flowing braid and the stray hairs that escape the grip of the ribbon.

Above and beyond there's a never-ending sky, stretching for miles and miles afar in shades of navy silk, with golden stars embodied onto the endless fabric of a Goddess's holy gown. The pine trees create velvet black patterns as they extend their peaks to reach the constellations and the moon and gather them for themselves.

The soil engulfs his fingertips when he sinks them below to ground himself from the fantasy surrounding him— like a dream. He doesn't remember how he ended up here, lulled by the owls and wolves and snuggled in wet soil and harsh roots that dig into his skin and try to claim his blood. It's a beautiful scenery, though terrifying and uncertain and eerily hollow. The ringing in his bones feels almost like a whispered warning, urging him to move away from the canopy of trees, and lichen-covered roots that seem to tangle themselves in chains meant to bind him.

So he follows the warning, the current of vibrations straightening his spine until it stands ramrod straight. His muscles burn a little but he doesn't wait for them to regain full mobility before starting a fast-paced walk. Though he wants to keep looking up and ahead, danger seems to lurk all around him, like a bubble, and he is scared of what will happen if he is to stumble.

It is so quiet— the animalistic growls and tunes of the forest's protectors have dulled to distant echoes— he is left alone with his erratic thoughts, which can rival his own heartbeats (thump, thump, thump, constantly but inconsistently pouncing on the vein jumping on his forehead). How did he get here? What was his life before he woke up tangled in soil and with thorns clinging to every dormant limb of his body?

It's his confusion that propels him to shift his walk into jogging, but it's the fear of the unknown that pushes him to his limit. The wind whipping him on the face shoves threads of flaming red hair inside of his parted lips. Beads of sweat race down his cool skin, forever frozen when the wind gives place to a raging storm. He expects the cotton candy clouds to pour down but they don't. It's dry and thundering and windy. Golden and silver threads waltz together in cascading light cutting the sky in halves. They unravel the darkness swallowing the forest, kissing the cutting peaks with electrical energy.

He hears the splinters of wooden trunk disintegrating, flying and piercing through the air, rather than sees them. The breaking tree screams louder than the ground-shaking thunders, and once it hits the soil in echoes, the whole weight sends a whirl of air that gets him from behind and sends him tumbling forward like rocks collapsing down a mountain.

Dizziness consumes him. His skull pounces as blood trickles down his splintered forehead, his broken nose, his busted lip. His arm is bent in an odd angle but it doesn't ache, just dully burns with needle-like flashes spreading across the junction where his collarbone meets his shoulder. The storm continues but he can only roll on his backs and open his teary eyes to watch the colors shifting on the immortal gown that still stretches for miles and miles ahead and beyond and afar, even if fuzzier and with a frame of blinding light on the corners of his vision, that gives an ethereal presence to the beautiful chaos.

Get up, fearful child.

He snaps his neck (crunch, crack, is it broken or just frail?) but is met by unaltered wilderness. The soothing voice is faceless, bodiless, hanging on the windy air like a lullaby to calm the deadly storm. His limbs move on their own accord, out of his control, away from his command. He's standing up even though his vision is still blurry, and he is walking towards the voice— or at least he expects he is— even though his arm is painlessly broken. It feels like he is only a soul, watching from the sidelines as his body remains connected to the real world, controlled like a puppet by a higher entity.