Sinking. He was sinking.

Falling.

There was... Nothing. And the nothing would not disappear. Was nothing supposed to disappear? It was nothing, after all. Where would it disappear to? How?

Gradually, the heaviness in his heart faded. In its place was a hollow feeling. A feeling of emptiness. He did not feel anything any longer. It was gone. The world was gone.

What seemed like years passed. What seemed like decades passed. Still, he was falling. He could not even remember why he was here. He wanted to know, but he could not.

He saw nobody with him. He was alone, and afraid. Why am I afraid? he asked himself. Surely I cannot be hurt now. Surely, I should be happy.

But the empty feeling remained.

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As time passed, the void beneath him began to stabilize. It became ground. The black nothingness above him gave way to a non-nothingness of its own. It remained dark, but lightened somewhat in appearance. Eventually, pale dots emerged in its depths.

He remembered these things. It lingered in the back of his mind, faint, but there. Grass, was the soft ground. Sky, was the dark void.

And stars. Stars were those white dots.

For a moment, his lips curved upward in contentment. He remembered these things well. Not clearly, but well. Just well enough.

As quickly, however, as his contentment had arrived, it faded. The emptiness was back, and with it came a new feeling. This feeling was like the emptiness. It was just as cold. Just as foreboding. Just as displeasing. It was similar to emptiness, that was true. But it was not the emptiness. This feeling was heavy, like the feeling he had when he first came to this strange place. The weight that gripped his heart, and held it down until he could no longer function. A sort of helplessness that was familiar. A helplessness that he knew. That he remembered.

A faint word emerged inside his brain; one just as familiar as the feeling. Something that called the feeling by name. But it did not remain for long, and neither did the feeling. His expression morphed from some sort of distress back to calmness. The emptiness overcame it. Emptiness was all that was left.

Sorrow, he thought, still remembering. Sorrow has no place here.

He turned away from the dark void above.

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Soon, more things began appearing in his new home. He named his home “garden,” another term with which he was distantly familiar. He named other things as well, such as trees, and flowers, and even smaller and leafier things than trees, called “bushes.” All things he knew. All things he remembered so well, from a place that seemed so far away. So out of reach.

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What was that place? Why couldn’t he truly remember?

That feeling came once more. The non-emptiness. This time, it was stronger. It had come more than once. Every time he recalled something, it was there. He knew he was missing something, but the emptiness wouldn’t let him remember it. It kept pushing away the secondary feeling, until it was gone and there seemed to be a void inside himself, just like the void above.

He found he liked the secondary feeling better at times. Sorrow, he believed it was. Even now, it was more familiar than emptiness. It was not warm, or comforting, but he felt safe with it; like he knew it, and understood it. He did not understand emptiness. Emptiness was strange.

The sorrow seemed more crippling than the emptiness, though. It wasn’t constant, but it was... Painful. It confused him, to think of it as painful. Why should he feel pain now? But he didn’t know how else to describe sorrow. It hurt. It hurt very much, sometimes.

But at least he could feel the pain it inflicted. That part was indeed comforting, somehow.

At least it wasn’t emptiness.

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It was always nighttime where he was. Never day. He liked that. He liked the stars. They made him remember. They made him feel sorrow, though he was not certain why.

There was rarely a moon here, but it showed up every once a while. He liked the moon too. It reminded him of the sun, one of his favorite things. It was not as bright, but it has a soft glow to it. It was welcoming; not warm, but welcoming. And comforting.

He liked the flowers too, and the trees. Sometimes, he would go climbing in the trees, way up to the highest branch he could. He could get a good look at the stars there. Unlike the moon, stars were always in the sky, and always bright. He felt that contentment again, just as he felt sorrow. Everything was beautiful here.

Yet... At the same time... He did not like it here.

The emptiness was slowly going away now, but with its absence, sorrow grew more painful and cold. There were times were he wished he was somewhere else, far way from here. He wanted to be in that place again. That place he knew from so long ago. Stars were there too. The sun was. Everything was. Why could he not go back?

Currently, he lay on his back, looking up at the night sky. He missed the real night sky. The real stars, and the real moon. He missed everything. As beautiful as it was in his new home, it felt lonely. He realized he did not just wish to simply see the real stars and moon.

He missed other things. He missed laughing, and crying. He missed happiness. He missed contentment. He missed...

He missed his world.

He even missed sorrow; sweet, wonderful, real sorrow. The sorrow he felt now was only a fraction of that. He could not cry. He could not weep. He could not pour his heart out and scream anguish to the sky. He missed sorrow so, so much. This sorrow was just an extension of emptiness. He hated emptiness.

He had always hated emptiness.

Sighing, he turned, beginning to pluck at a few bluebells that lay at his side. This “garden” was not his world, and it never would be. He didn’t care how strange, or cruel that world might have been. Everything here came from it, so surely it couldn’t be all that bad?

Maybe it was. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was better off living here, instead of being there in that world.

But I miss my world. I really do.

And he never would stop missing it. He could never go back, but he would forever wish he could. That world had been beautiful. More beautiful than this world could ever be, because that world had something more than stars and a sun and a moon. For that reason, he would never stop missing his world.

And somewhere, beyond this place, he knew she was missing him too.