Silent, restful, massive.

They lie here utterly still, where sound cannot reach them, where time has loosened its hold. For many years, so many that they now cannot remember when they first fell asleep, they have lain here. No breath ever filled them; no spark ever stirred beneath their ribs. They simply existed as stillness, shaped but unmoving, a quiet form untouched by time’s beginning. The world presses softly against them, but nothing passes through. They experience no warmth, no sound, no memory.

Until everything shifts.

A surge of air fills me, and I gasp, opening my eyes. Blinding sunlight comes into view, so bright that it draws my eyes shut again. After a long while, I slowly become familiar with this ray of morning light.

I gradually open my eyes wide.

Shapes rise in the distance. Mountains? They resemble me, yet they are not me. Green, vivid, unclaimed by any name I know. I tilt my gaze upward. Blue swells, filling my sight, strange and impossible. I stare; I get lost. White streaks slide across the blue, fleeting, like whispers tracing invisible paths. They circle once, then dart toward a distant peak. More scattering lines across the stillness. Another blue emerges but deeper, holding echoes of the first blue and the green mountains, a mirror of colors folded within itself. The white shapes dive into it; some vanish, some slip into the green mountains, disappearing, leaving the world altered, quiet, and strange. 

All of this is exquisite and novel, yet I find myself profoundly bewildered. I have woken suddenly, and the abruptness makes everything feel unreal. I have no idea why I am awake, nor can I grasp the significance of my awakening.

*** 

Rustle.

The grass stirs, just a tremor, as if the dawn wind has brushed lightly across its spine. Then it shifts again, and from behind a wooden door, one foot steps out, followed by another. Here is a man, weary in posture, his back bowed, yet his eyes catch the newborn light. He lifts his gaze, and a strand of morning sun spills into his eyes, brightening them as though lighting a lantern within.

“Good morning,” he says, his voice bright with quiet joy.

He walks straight out of the house and onto the mountain path, for chopping wood is his daily ritual. As he climbs, he lets his eyes roam. The distant hills are a deep, soothing green that eases the mind simply by existing. After a moment of taking it in, he puts himself fully to his work. Soon, he finishes and leaves the mountain, satisfied. At the foot of the slope, he steps into the fish market.

“Come have a look, young man! This year’s fish are the finest – even the birds scramble to snatch them!” A vendor woman calls out to him.

“All right, those please.” He chooses two plump, gleaming fish, hoists his bundle of wood, and heads home, carrying the scent of the morning with him.

As he nears home, he sees a thin ribbon of smoke curling from the chimney, and a quiet smile touches his lips as he pushes the door open. He tosses the fish into the basin and sets the firewood onto the growing pile.

“Well, I’ve overdone it today,” he murmurs to himself. His wife steps into the room.

“Looks like we’ve got enough wood to warm the whole town.” He turns to her with a grin. She taps his shoulder in mock reproach, and the two of them laugh before they walk together into their daughter’s room.

Warm light filters through the curtains, washing over the vase and its flowers, scattering into soft shapes that drift across the bed. On the quilt, where the shadow of a budding flower falls, a small lump rises beneath it. The couple steps toward it on quiet feet. Just as they reach out to wake their daughter, the lump stirs, and then, with a swift little burst, a beautiful head pops out. She blinks up at them, her eyes as bright as her father’s.

She grins. “I’m already awake!”

“Is that so? Nearly slept your way into the late morning! Good thing it’s the weekend.” Her father answers in a teasing, indulgent voice.

Their laughter mingles, warm and easy, until father and daughter tumble downstairs for breakfast. The mother, staying behind for a moment, sweeps the curtains open in a single motion, and a spill of golden sunlight floods the room.

***

The birds fall silent, and the cicadas’ voices take over, their song rising sharper in the heat.

“Why have all the little white things stopped fluttering?” I wonder.

The radiant sunlight is so brilliant that I cannot help but stare, again and again, as if each glance reveals something new. The sun, crowned high in the sky, spills its light across all that lies below; the distant mountains stand like fortresses; the animals that move across the land seem like strokes of living brilliance. And then there is me. What purpose do I serve? I feel like some long-slumbering anomaly, a creature misplaced, something that perhaps should not exist here at all.

I drift into thought.

A pressure deep and coiled, restless in ways I cannot name, begins to build. Something moves inside me, hot and thick, and it wants to rise, to break free from the weight above it, pushing it down. I do not know what I am, or why I tremble, only that the world above presses down and I cannot stay still.

“Why do I ache so much?” I whisper. Every pulse inside me hums with a force that feels older than memory, and every vibration shakes the walls around me as if the earth itself responds to my restlessness. I know I cannot remain contained.

***

Thud, thump, shuffle.

“Both of you, move a little faster,” she calls up from below, her voice drifting through the house to where her husband and daughter are folding clothes upstairs after breakfast.

She reminds them to bring warmer layers, her tone wry. She notes how spring has just begun to warm, and yet they are already thinking about skiing again, never quite able to tolerate the heat.

***

In a sudden flash, the birds on the distant mountains take flight, spilling across the sky and streaking the deep blue with white feathers. They circle once, then surge straight toward the horizon, a flowing ribbon of motion and light.

I grow aware of tension, a tightening of walls I did not know could exist. Every pulse inside me stretches me taut, every tremor a reminder that I am bound but not contained. There is a sound.

Low, deep, vibrating.

It trembles through my body, and I cannot tell if it is mine or the world’s.

I am ready. Ready for what? I must move.

Confusion twists through me. The urge to break, to flow, to burn, is inseparable from a fear I cannot name. Yet, even in this unknowing, I feel strength, immense and untouchable, as if the earth itself whispers that it listens.

And now, I cannot hold it.

***

“Alright, that’s everything,” the daughter announces as she tosses the ‘final’ sock into the suitcase.

“Nothing is ever truly ‘alright’ when a sock is missing.” Her mother follows with a soft sigh of disbelief, murmuring, before stepping into the room and declaring at last: “There. Now it’s done.” She throws the final sock into the suitcase.

A moment later, the father appears, rolling out his suitcase. Together, the family pushes their luggage outside, the wheels humming as they approach the car waiting at the foot of the small hill. The mother climbs into the driver’s seat of the cart while the father slips back into the house for one final sweep, just in case something lingers behind.

The kitchen is clean, untroubled; the bathroom too, washed of all traces. He ascends the stairs, noting how they seem to tremble beneath his feet, as if remembering something he does not. Upstairs, the master bedroom window is shut, perfectly still. Only the daughter’s room remains. There, on the sill, the flower still blooms, striking and serene, with its shadow resting beside it like a quiet companion. The father studies that shadow, then looks again. The once-gray silhouette gathers a faint rim of red, delicate at first, then deepening, while the blossom itself begins to swell, larger and larger, as if drawing breath.

He runs to his family.

***

Scalding, untamed, immense.

This force surges through me, welling upward in relentless waves. Power bursts from my body in jolts I cannot control, each one sharp with a flicker of pain. Above me, the gathering cloud of smoke thickens, a darkening measure of the ache swelling inside. From my chest, torrents of molten orange and red slowly and heavily push their way out, carrying a silent threat as they spill downward at my feet.

I am overwhelmed; this heat scorches not only my heart but seems to ravage the world itself. In the blur of rising haze, I glimpse the distant green disappearing, replaced by hills stripped to ashen bone and a sky no longer blue.

Slowly, the pain within me softens, and I watch my body with calm detachment. Flames flared outward, untamed and unyielding, leaving ruin in their wake.

I feel immense and unstoppable.

The scope of my power thrills me, fills me with a fierce satisfaction. I feel the exquisite surge of my own force beneath it, a tightening in my chest.

The world burns in brilliance, and I burn within it.