Work Text:
I want to go home.
That was all I could think, for a while.
I can't remember what I was doing. I don't know where I exited from.
At first, it felt something like being lost. When you realize that you are lost, you still hold the glimmer of hope that you may yet find your way back. I retraced my steps, and the city I'd come from was gone; a pit of nonsense that stung my head. I began to believe that it was never there to begin with. So, I stopped looking for it.
I want to go home.
I walked, and I found a door, but my hand couldn't touch it. I found a sign, but the words didn't make sense. I tried again and again to find someone, but no echo of a voice ever answered me in the silence.
Seeking any clarity, I stood and stared long into the unparsable arrangement of patterns and symbols that roared above my head — still, I couldn't glean anything from it. The only truth to be found here was that nothing meant anything in this place. The fundamental rules of what I understood to be reality were softly being washed away. The tops of trees touch the water, and the ground extends towards the empty white sky. I began to accept that was the way it was, or, had always been.
At some point, as I trudged onward, my limbs became snagged on the ends of invisible hooks. I couldn't walk forward, I could no longer back away. An unseen force embraced me, holding my body still, muffling my dizzied movements. I sensed that this was reality's way of protecting me; as though if I took another step, then I, too, might become another pattern that makes up this swirling world. So, I stopped walking. I stopped struggling.
I want to go home. It was getting weaker now. The words were losing color.
I attempted to focus on nothing but the ground beneath my feet, yet my gaze slid away anywhere it fell. I covered my eyes, and my skin became numb to my surroundings. I could be standing in place, or tumbling through the air, for all I know it didn't make a difference.
I stopped trying to understand it. I stopped pleading.
I tried to picture what I remembered to be home, but all I could see was white.