The first sensation that came to him was the gentle lapping of something cool around his legs. The feeling in question had an almost kindly character to it. He let that sensation carry him through the rivers of muddled consciousness, thought slowly emerging.

The first question was a pressing, if quite basic one.

Was he?

It dominated his mind, filling it to the brim as he asserted his existence. He certainly did exist, that he was fairly sure of - what was considering the question, if nothing indeed existed? So he must exist, but in exactly what mode or medium he wasn’t exactly sure. All he knew was of himself, drifting along a slurry of thought, with something cool lapping at his legs.

So, then if that question was, at least for the time being, answered, who was he?

He strained at the boundaries of his empty mind, and found nothing - no scrap nor iota of recollection or memory.

He gave up, and left himself to drift for an indeterminate time.

The third question, which he hoped might be a little easier to answer - where was he?

He opened something with effort, and something bright streamed in. ‘Eyes’. That’s what he had opened, and the streaming thing was ‘light’. It wasn’t the usual kind, at least he thought so, although he couldn’t exactly remember what the ‘usual’ kind was. It was soft, gentle, not so much ‘streaming’ in, but laid down on the surface of his vision like gossamer.

As his vision resolved, he became aware of what lay… in front of him? Above him? Directionality was a little fuzzy. What he did experience was blurred tones of orange, red, blue and dark purple, mixing together in splashes and strokes. The ultimate effect was something like a gradual gradient, with uncountable tiny dots letting forth that soft light.

Ah.

Starlight.

He was looking upwards then, with a sky full of stars and colour above. Again, there was that definite sense of the unusual, that this was not what skies were ‘supposed’ to look like. And again, he couldn’t quite remember what the ‘usual’ sky was to contrast. Something deep within told him that he’d seen many skies, or potentially the same sky many times, and it did not look like this.

His body, light as a feather, experienced no strain as he sat up. Once more, the unusual feeling, and once more, no usual feelings to compare it to. His legs were submerged into dark waters, which rose and fell around him slowly. Cool, but not painful or irritatingly cold, it stretched out with only the merest ripple into the horizon. Below him, yes it must have been ‘below’, was a fine black sand that gently sloped into the ocean.

So that was what was forward, now what about behind?

He turned something, his ‘head’ he seemed to recall, and found much of the same. Another sea, although this one was made out of the black sand instead of the black water. The dunes too stretched to the horizon and beyond, with the stars vanishing behind them.

So, where was he then? Evidently ‘here’, wherever here was. Now, he was certain that he’d been somewhere else before, but had no way of knowing where nor how long ago it’d been. Had he been ‘here’ before? Perhaps. There was a sense of familiarity to the place.

He stood with the merest effort, black grains cascading down to join their siblings. One foot after another sank into the damp sand and soon he’d left the imprint of his body long behind. The stars, nor the sea, nor the sand seemed to change character or position as he walked.

Onward. Onward. Onward, along what he thought was a straight line into the far distance.

It was some time later when he stopped to take a glance around, and found nothing behind him. Perhaps he’d barely moved at all, and the imprint had merely been washed away by the gentle waves, or perhaps it was too far into the distance to see. There was nothing before him either, merely the exact same sand, water, and stars. There was no lightening or darkening of the endless sky, no change in the positions of the constellations, merely the black desert, eternal for all he knew.

Perhaps no time had passed at all, and all the movement was merely inside his mind.

The water flowed over his feet as he walked at its edge, trying to discern matters of who, where, what, when, why? Perhaps he was nobody, perhaps this place was nowhere, and perhaps there was no real reason to be here other than… being here. It was all rather confusing and any time he seemed to be getting close to an answer it stole away.

Ultimately, when all the questions were gone, there was only the walk, one step, two step, across the sand.

He tried to count the steps and got lost somewhere around fifty thousand. He tried to gauge whether he was ‘hungry’, or ‘tired’. Those were things, he thought he knew, that were supposed to happen after a while. If he was remembering correctly, such things seemed to have little sway here. Hence, time passed, for him if not the world, and he found himself walking onwards.

He seemed to remember a concept of ‘day’ and ‘night’, a brightening of the darkening used to tell time. But the light was always the same here, an ethereal twilight stuck between the two. There had been something else, however, that he was sure of, that indicated the passage of night and day.

It took him another couple thousand steps before he finally had it. Sun and Moon, that had been it, hadn’t it? They were… circular, that he was pretty sure of, and one had been warm, and the other cooler, and smaller. The moon was the former, and the sun was the latter, or maybe the other way around?

New thoughts shelved for the moment, he continued on his path to places unknown. It took his fancy to turn left and wander across the dunes with the ocean to his back. Up and down, up and down, he trudged across the hills and troughs of the dunes. Yet, when he glanced back from time to time, the ocean always seemed to be the same approximate distance. He kept at it for a while, trying to see if there was any indication of distance being gained.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It was a consummate failure. The sea was still there, its lapping waters calling to his back.

Once more, he found himself at that endless shore, and in the far distance, both touchable yet incomprehensibly distant, hung a pale circle.

‘Moon’.

He remembered that, at least.

The sea had changed, gone from bare ripples to a smooth mirror. The darkness underneath its surface had deepened, something stirring beneath. It was reaching for him, no longer be beckoning, with a hunger that belied its apparent calmness. The moon hung low to touch the sea and where they met, a black shadow pressed against the interstice.

From that shadow a voice ripped across the stilled waters, prying against his ears. The worlds were fashioned out of something sharper than any blade, darker than the night sky, peeling reality with harsh syllables.

“PAIN,” it said, over and over, a drum sounded out the beat of a wild and wounded heart.

The water had crept up around him while he stared, small waves brushing just below his knees. The shadow against the moon grew great and terrible, half submerged, half silhouette. The character of the thing was impossible to make out, with only the vaguest resemblance to a horrible flower. Elements of it unfolded like petals with a luminosity that shattered the twilight of the desert.

There was a gaze, or perhaps a multitudes of directed lines of intention that intersected solely on him. He was dissected, without consideration of dignity or privacy, everything perceived and understood. The waters before him parted, drawn back like bare cloth and he saw the true scale of the thing.

It underlay the bottom of the world, an incomprehensible mass of tangled roots and mad thoughts spreading through every deep place and high recess. All merged, all twisted with no end nor beginning, and deeper, deeper still, a baleful light shining as a furious star. It pummelled his perception, tore at what little memory or identity remained, coiling and snaking those hateful roots through his very soul.

He began to slip, pulled as inexorably as gravity pulled one downard without pity or reprieve. He was a grim prize, an unknowing creature that had walked into reach of the mind flower. The waters rising, he attempted to summon a pathetic protest, to deny the fate which had been chosen for him. Such defences were swept aside and crushed with unceremonious ease, as the waters rose, and rose, and rose. He felt the first touch of the thing, uncountable mental fingers groping, and having found their target within him, closing in an impossible grip.

The scream was high and hideous, an echo of a thousand languages calling out in incomprehensible fury. His own soul began to crackle in tandem with a pain so furious it drowned every other sensation. All of it, the scream, the water, the faint pressure of the moonlight, blurred into the chaotic static. A rent in reality was beneath him, around him, the beach vanishing into the distance. He was falling into a void, where nothing and no one could reach.

The dread certainty of utter destruction was upon him. Whatever impression he’d left upon existence would be washed away, mere grains of sand drawn into the depths of the sea, never to be seen nor known by anyone nor anything.

But before that fate was sealed with oblivion, something pulsed out across the darkness. Something high and pure and beautiful where there was once only the corrupt horror of the flowering abomination.

He found himself curled up on the sand, staring out into a moonless sea.

It took him some time to remember who he was, or rather, the fact that he was, period. A sense of horror, pain, and a narrow escape from peril echoed in his head, though the detail was fuzzy. Clutching himself, and shivering despite the lack of chill, he lay on the sand for an indeterminate amount of time.

When he managed to pull himself up to his knees, he found that the scene had definitely changed. The dunes and stars were all the same, but what lay between them was entirely different. The empty air folded and swirled, little eddies and ripples and warps, turning the sand and waters into structure.

Climbing to his feet, he found that the distortions stretched out far into the distance, expanding and extending to greater heights and widths, increasing in complexity and detail. He was standing in a place, something definite and specific, built with purpose and intent.

He walked out into the warped location, clambering deeper and deeper into the distortions. He found that the shapes became more definite, and more obvious the further he went. There were flowers, yes, unmistakably flowers, of different shapes and sizes. A twisted lamppost without candle to light it, recalling other memories of warmth and lights. A rocky stream, complete with moss and lichens, so real he could almost hear the bubbling of non-existent waters.

The next dune brought more sights, trees and cobbles and blades of grass. The one after that, walls, both chest high and well above his head. It was building itself around him as he stepped over the sand, and when he crossed the last dune…

Promenades and boulevards, staircases and great lofts, immense windows and walls that looped and winded and reconnected with each other in ways that seemed impossible. Corridor after loft after wing after walkway, terraces and sloped beds and balconies and pillars. None with any colour or brightness of their own, but rather sculpted out of the stars and sand and sea.

Space itself had been folded, pinched, and pressed to create a masterwork of bizarre architecture. Between all of the structures, there were trees and flowers and lawns of both distantly familiar and absolutely alien character. It was a garden, a garden in a timeless place with no colour, yet substance.

A garden of glass.

He stepped on the transparent cobbles, and walked a zig-zagging path that turned into itself and out between an arch of a walkway. He was greeted with a small pool and the sound of falling water. He stooped and gathered a handful of a liquid that he couldn’t see, but could feel. Deep within, far larger than what should’ve fit through the portal, swam immense creatures. Coiling and folding in on themselves like the garden itself, they floated above what must’ve been an entire city, all sunk deep below the black sand.

He surveyed the series of bridges and districts that extended into the dark, before finding to his left another bench. This one had not been there before, and was now accompanied by an immaculate lamppost that emitted a not-light. From a spiralling post, there were hanging baskets of flowers with trailing vines that moved in a non-existent wind. He made his way over, and found that the bench held his weight without give.

An indeterminate amount of time was spent on trying to guess at the rhyme or reason behind the labyrinthine architecture. Eventually, he had to give up, the turns and twists impossible to follow for long. Perhaps it had not been designed at all, rather such complexity was some kind of inevitable law of this place.

There was something beside him on the bench.

He picked it up, taking more than a moment to recognize what it was, so different was it from the rest of the Garden. Solid, with a colour and texture all its own, a paper envelope, faded by age and dust, with a flaking red seal at its centre. A ‘letter’, alive and unsculpted unlike the garden, with its own sound and smell. He picked at the wax, and opened the letter with the satisfying rustle and scent of old, folding paper.

Then he departed from the grey half-life of the black beach, and found himself somewhere entirely different.

He was at a desk, his desk, a great behemoth of red-brown wood with a frankly ridiculous amount of drawers. Not that he could see much of them, with the sheer amount of parchment and books drowning the surface. He had a hand, one of warm flesh and blood, closed around an inkwell that was teetering dangerously over a fresh sheet.

He frowned at the sudden sense of displacement, sure that there was something wrong, but he wasn’t quite sure wha-

A knock at the door, hurried but strong, came to interrupt his thoughts. It was almost hidden behind one of the great red curtains arranged around the walls of the considerable room. Light bled through a handful of them, suggesting the presence of windows. Those walls that didn’t were furnished by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stuffed to the gills. He quickly righted the inkwell, and gave some customary response while drying his hands with a cloth.

A voice, muffled by the wall, but still legible as a young woman’s, answered, and the door practically flew open. Into the room bursted a youth in the prime of adulthood, carrying a dusty grimoire. She paced toward the desk, and he suspected that she was barely holding herself from sprinting.

Before he could afford even a ‘good morning’, as was their custom, she slammed the book on his desk. This drew both an annoyed grunt and a reproachful look from him, which she responded to by nearly spilling an inkwell as she flipped open to a page. Words began to drift in and out of perspective, too blurry to make out. Clearly she was excited about something - well of course, she was always excited about something or other.

Wait, how did he know that?

How did he know her? He definitely did.

He was about to reach out, to call out, to ask her name, who she was, who he was, before her final words came into sharp clarity.

“...and that’s only the beginning, professor Efrain!”

Efrain. Yes. Yes, that had been his name. In some other time, some other place.

‘Efrain’.

The vision was gone, and he was sitting on a bench made from black sand in a garden made from the world. Above him, between all the spires and walkways, a great thing floated. It looked almost like swirling scraps of cloth and paper, scrawled in ink and charcoal, with words and symbols from many different languages. They twisted and compressed into a sharp point beyond his eye’s sight, but which he was certain looked at him.

He wasn’t pulled, that would imply that some kind of force was exerted upon him. Rather, the scene shifted and moved so that he was closer to the mass of turning lexicons.

“You do not belong here,” came a voice, authoritative and cold.

The garden, the beach, the stars and sand, all vanished upwards as he tumbled, deeper and deeper. Out of space and memory and time he fell into a warm current which carried him away back to a different consciousness altogether.