How many days have I been at this?

The wind playfully bobbed the golden berries in front of my face as I concentrated on moving them—just as I had done over and over again before.

It was hard to keep track of days in this form. I lacked a circadian rhythm, and when I focused on a task, sometimes hours and days would go by before I noticed. It was as if my personal clock was out of sync with the world around me. And why wouldn’t it be? I wasn’t from this world.

I may have been at this for weeks.

The sun seemed to reach higher in the sky and stayed up there longer than when I first arrived. Was it the middle of the summer? I couldn’t feel heat, the humidity, nor a cool breeze on my sweltering skin. The shadows lengthened across the roof, marking the end of another day. I felt nothing at all except loss. My heart ached for people I couldn’t remember and a life that had been taken from me. There were times, though, when I simply lost time in a daze. I wondered if this is what it meant to fade away. Was this what the angels had in store for me? An existence not extinguished in a flash, but isolated and forgotten until nothing remained of me?

“You’re really quite the optimist these days,” I said to myself. I glared at the berries which bobbed brightly in the wind just to spite me. “Die already!!!” Then I screamed at them in frustration, my fists clenched into angry mallets. I struck at my tormentors with both arms swinging like a windmill of frustration before breaking out in laughter.

“This is so stupid!”

You’re losing it, what’s your toes. You’re screaming at the berries.

I took comfort that at least nobody had seen me have a meltdown on top of a roof while screeching at a tree. It wasn’t my finest moment since arriving on Verdant. I sat down to think of a new approach, which amounted to crossing my legs and floating an inch or two above the rooftop. Yet my thoughts went in circles. If determination was a form of faith, then there had to be more to manifesting powers. I couldn’t figure it out.

Behind the cabin, I could hear chittering. Below in the shadows of the trees, a chippunk was calling to others like it. Chipmunks back home didn’t behave this way that I ever noticed, so I watched with interest. It held in its hands a golden berry like the ones I had been trying to knock free from their branches. As two other chippunks came over, they began to fight over the berry.

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This is my chance!

If I could knock berries off for the chippunks, I could feed them. Then they would stay around, which would let me practice getting their attention with words. All I had to do was knock of the berries.

Great plan, genius.

I left the unfolding drama below and returned to the tree. The poltergeists that I remembered threw things around a room, so I should be able to do this. I wanted to serve the chippunks. They weren’t human, but they had to count, didn’t they?

Convinced that this time would make the difference, I focused on the berries again, but this time I envisioned them flying through the air, landing on the roof, and rolling off. With a snap, the twig with golden berries ripped off the tree and hit the roof just above the chippunks, then rolled off the edge.

“Whoa!”

I soared to the spot where the berries went over and looked down. The chippunks had scattered at first, but the first one recovered quickly and bounded back over to its new treasure. It stood over the twig with its arms wide and made sounds at the other chippunks. “Chuck chuck choo” it repeated while looking as menacing as a cute, little critter with a mohawk could muster.

Well, we can’t have that. You don’t get to horde all the goodies.

I went back to the tree and this time I was able to separate individual berries. I began propeling one golden berry after another over the edge to the chippunks below. After I had lobbed ten of them to the ground below, I envisioned plucking a berry slowly, then floating it over the roof, and dropping it down. Determination and envisioning clearly in my mind what I wanted to happen seemed to be the trick. As planned, the berry popped off the tree, floated to the edge, then dropped when I willed it. I so pleased with my success that I felt the last of my depression fling away with the berries.

The chippunks had cleared away the berries, and I could hear them chattering to themselves in the forest down the slope beyond the cabin. I was certain they would be back. Tomorrow I would practice moving the berries into neat piles for them. I also wanted to see if there was a weight limit on what I could levitate, but for now I was feeling fatigued from my efforts.

Moving down into the cabin, I floated above the bed beside the tree and thought about all the objects I had encountered so far. The berries had been the best candidates for practice, but I wondered if I was missing something. That is when I remembered the shiny thing under the bed. Now I could reach it.

Or could I? I was able to move the berries because I was trying to help the chippunks. Was that a condition? To help or hurt a living creature?

I wouldn’t know until I tried.