I was tossed through space, time and reality grabbing onto me by the rump and bodily hurling me at speeds unlike any I'd previously attained. Stars and concepts whirled around me in a cosmic tornado of philosophical confusion, and the universe itself squeezed and groaned. Expanding, a pocket of absolute paradoxical existence pounded on my purely mental form, hammering it into a physical shape with startling discomfort. Peeling open, the universe tore a hole open and dumped me on the ground.
Hmmm, I thought, my body sprawled out. That was interesting.
After I recover from the shock of existing, I took a good look at my surroundings. Plenty of trees, very creatively made. Totally random design, which is always pretty hard. Actually, everything seems pretty random - the grass is green, the ground is pretty bumpy, and the sky is... blue? Who makes a blue sky!? Off in the distance, I can see a small yellow ball producing impressive amounts of light and heat. I should probably check that out at some point - it's sure to have some interesting inhabitants.
I tried to stand up and found it impossible. Looking down, I discovered to my absolute shock that there were parts attached to me. A lot of them. Raising a hand, I turned it over, simultaneously fascinated and horrified. I had slightly bumpy purple skin with green accents, and my knuckles were kind of pointy. My fingers were... kind of intriguing, if I was honest. They had claws on the ends, which looked quite sharp. I wiggled them at my face and giggled.
Something brushed across my face, and I whipped around to try and find the source. Nothing was there, but I could still feel that weird feeling. It was like... someone lightly touching my face, without anyone being there.
With a sudden attempt, I tried to get up and float the heck out of there, but my parts weighed me down again! With a quick check, I found feet (ugh) attached to the rest of me, and sprung to them, running out of there like a natural physical entity.
No, that didn't really happen. My legs twitched violently, and I was launched backward into the grass. To my surprise, there was dirt underneath the grass. Seriously, whoever designed this place was an absolute genius. The attention to detail is just incredible. Who would have ever thought of having a layer under the base ground? This guy, apparently.
Oh yeah, something's getting romantic with my face.
Grabbing onto the dirt, I sent a quick apology into the sky and started dragging myself towards one of the trees, my clawed hands providing remarkable traction. After a minute or two, I managed to pull myself around it, and reach behind me to pull myself up, my back resting against the side of the tree.
The brushing had stopped at some point, and I take a moment to collect myself. Casting my mind around the nearby area reveals nobody. I can't even feel something blocking me, which either means whoever I'm up against is an absolute prodigy, or... there's nobody there?
Reaching a hand out into the open, I feel the strange sensation again and strive not to recoil. It doesn't give off the vibe of another person. It's more like a constant pressure, oscillating in intensity.
Motion catches my eye, and I look a little further up my arm. I'm wearing a very nice set of purple and green robes, matching my brand-new skin, and moving slightly. Swinging back and forth as though there's something pushing it, almost exactly like whatever's applying pressure to my hand. With a sudden thought, I stare askance at both hand and clothing.
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There's no way, but... is the air moving!? Did the designer of this place make it so that... how would that even work? Now that I have a theory, I look up. The leaves and branches of the tree I'm under - of all of the trees around me - are gently swaying. Each and every single leaf twitching and flicking back into its position, moving without any sort of cooperation or timing. It's a display of random engineering the likes of which I've never even imagined was possible.
Since I know there's no one around, I can take a minute to better inspect myself. I've got four limbs in total, two arms and two legs. Ten fingers, ten toes. Two green eyes, and a whole mess of tentacles extending from the back of my head. After a brief experiment, I found that I could move them as though they were little arms. Pretty handy, but probably too weak to be of much help.
A fairly basic template, in all seriousness. I'd kind of hoped for something better after all the unbelievable quality I'd seen so far, but maybe this guy was more into 'scapes than entities. In fairness, he was really good at those.
Thinking back, I could remember one or two miniature realities my friends had made where bipedalism was required. After a moment or two, I pulled myself to my feet, holding onto the tree for extra balance, and waited. My legs were... weird. It took genuine effort just to stay standing, as though my body had weight to it.
Looking at the tree I was holding onto, I found pale material peeling out from behind the brown bark of the tree where my claws had scored it, and my eyes widened. Flexing my fingers, I dug them into the tree's surface and pulled. Bark and more of the pale stuff followed, and I dropped it on the turf under my feet as I stared at what was in front of me.
Under the tree's bark, a veritable army of tiny creatures dug and walked around, creating tunnels and climbing through them. They seemed startled at my sudden intrusion, panicking and sprinting around. Lining up in a neat circle and snapping their little jaws at me, they waited for their companions to start carrying away minute white ellipsoids, bringing them further into the tree.
Was everything this detailed? Did everything have a second layer, or maybe even more than that? These things didn't have mental projections, which meant that they were constructs as well! And they were just living in the one tree!
Looking around, I wondered about the rest of the trees in the forest. Not all of them had the same color of bark. Most of them were different shades of brown, but I could see one or two in the distance that were white with orange splotches, one with gray, and a large one that didn't have bark at all. And all of them might have a whole group of these tiny creatures living inside them.
I sat down. It wasn't a conscious decision either, which just blew my mind. Whoever had made this place... they were operating on a whole other level. I'd made a reality before, but it'd been pretty terrible. I'd cheated on the physics, making everything that existed go down. That hadn't gone well, and anything I made ended up falling over. One of my friends had made a pretty good reality, with working physics and natural laws, and a decent landscape to boot. I'd thought they should enroll it in the local competition, see if they could get an award and maybe some bonus power.
This... I couldn't even describe this. The air moved almost constantly, everything had more than one layer, and it almost felt like everything played into each other. The creatures ate the inside of the trees, the trees probably ate something else (hopefully not me), and I hadn't even left the entry point.
It was such a mastery of creative will that I couldn't even comprehend it. Granted, I was pretty young, but I didn't think even Grandpa could come close to something like this, much as I hated to admit it.
I stood up. If something as easy to overlook as a forest had this much detail in it, I couldn't wait to see the rest of the world.