Michael

I calm myself down after about 5 minutes when I realise I have an audience only a few feet away. I attempt to stand as slowly as possible so as to enjoy the sensation on the soft sand on my legs and feet.

I could almost say I can feel every grain of sand on my skin without exaggerating. I seem to be super sensitive to touch, the hairs on my arms and legs are standing on end. I seem to have lost some of my war wounds and scare tissue.

The knife slice at my left abdomen is gone. The bullet wound I took to the tight is no longer there. I flex my toes into the soft, warm sand as I take a deep breath. I know I should be alert, I know I should be assessing threats and my surroundings. Cataloging escape routes and improvised weapons.

But I just feel too good, this is euphoria I think. Have you ever walked into a stuffy stinky room, but then you spend 5 minutes inside and you can no longer smell the stink, you've acclimated to the foulness. And it's only when you leave and breath fresh air again that you realise that the place is still as stuffy now as it was when you entered it, still full of foul air.

That's what it's like breathing this new air wherever I am. Earth was the foul room I had no idea was foul whilst inside it. But now whatever I'm breathing is amazing, I swear I could sell this formula back home and make billions selling air.

After another 2 or 3 minutes of flexing my legs and breathing deeply I fully open my eyes and look around. Its just the last straw.

It can only try to depict what the world around me looks like by saying it's like never having seen the colour green my whole life. Not knowing that there is a colour filtered from my perception, and then one day in a sunny spring day suddenly having the ability to see green.

I gap a second then snap my mouth closed quickly as I squint my eyes and look directly at the sun. I frown and look at it without squinting. There is no sting to my eyes at all, I could glare at the beautiful bright sun for hours without any adverse effects to me vision.

Nothing is too bright to look at or too dim, and I realise that I've been micro squinting on earth almost my entire life. Living on earth is like living in a fart infested room with grey walls and too bright florescent lighting compared to being here, on Gaia.

Yes, it comes to me. I'm on Gaia and more information is slowly trickling into my mind but it's a different type of upload than the one I've already experienced on my transition to here. I still have a lot to think about from what I can remember about the experience.

"Hello." I finally say after looking at the three people before me.

One of then holding the clothes I had on in the car a moment ago. Their clothing is strange and there is am air of calm, quiet and accomplishment about them.

"Welcome traveller." A voice says inside me head.

It takes a second for me to understand that one of them just spoke directly into my mind somehow. The voice deep and unfamiliar yet not a voice at all. Almost like another sense that's a combination of hearing and thought and intentions.

I zero in on the speaker somehow. A very tall well built man but difficult to be sure with his robes and jacket, like I said, strange attire. The woman steps forward with my dry clothes. Her shoes and dress getting wet as she walks into the water up to her shins in order to get to me.

"We are the welcomers, it is our duty to help you acclimatise to life on Gaia, for there is no going back, only forward." She passes me my clothes and our skin touches a moment and suddenly a spark sizzles between us and I see myself through her eye. I understand the impression she has of me, the way she sees me standing here naked, then it's gone almost as soon as it was there.

"Interesting, it seems you have been blessed with powers of the mind, but we will get to that, come, dress." She passes the sweatpants and t-shirt.

I get dressed slowly, everything seemingly new. From lifting my leg and getting into the pants one leg at a time, to the very sensation of clothe on my skin. Most people don't realize but there is a persistent ringing noise in all developed cities on earth.

A low frequency ringing that is nearly at the last decibel of human hearing. It drives crazy most people or creatures that can hear it though most acclimatise, I'm realizing that it's gone as well. There is nothing irritating any of my senses.

"Can you understand me?" The woman before me asks in my head.

I give her a look and nod slightly. There is no knowing how trustworthy any of these people are nor what their intentions may be but I am stranded in a new place with no bearings. I need to follow their lead until I suspect they have nefarious intentions or I can fend for myself. I need to asses how dangerous the local flora and how familiar the fauna.

I stand before her in grey relay sweats and a tshirt.

She turns and walks closer to the bank, I take the opportunity to study her further. She has on a type of stretchy black leggings and a long sleeved shirt that comes down to her thighs. Her feet are sandaled with what appear to be leather made sandals with no metal buckles on them.

Her hair is tied up to the top of her head and twisted multiple tines. It is predominantly black but has silver streaks in it that look more aesthetic than natural. Her skin tone would make me assume she was Indian or Arabic if not for the slight Asian tilt in her eyelids.

Her lips are full, her nose small and soft and her jaw strong. The woman is a beauty that could stop traffic even in her middle age. Or at least she looks to be at around 40 years of age.

I follow behind her as we get close to her two male companions in silk flowing robes that are more similar to things worn in the middle east than robes worn by judges or monks.

"I am Mirabilis, this on the right is Estergon and that on the left is Rumeria." The woman says in my head but both men bow slightly as their names are mentioned to be.

Ok, so the mental communication isn't as private as I imagined.

"Please, follow at your own pace."

We 'talk' as we walk down the side of a mountain. The path narrow but clear and well traveled. The air refreshing in a way that's almost like drinking a clear glass of water.

I'm told that the better I acclimatise to this world the more of the basics I will know. Apparently the is something known as 'ether' that is everywhere and in everything in different forms. And it eventually fills all things to saturation, permeating deep into the membranes of the cells.

Everything has ether in it, everything from the air to trees to rocks. And the level of ether in an object directly affects it's toughness, it's flexibility/malleability and the amount of a type of potential energy it can contain.

I listening as we slowly walked down the beautiful mountain. The views breathtaking and distracting, the warmth of the blue sun the perfect temperature on my skin. The top of the clouds beloe are so white that I haven't nothing to compared them to.

Academically I know we were up high, but I've been at high altitudes before, and I know that to be above clouds you shouldn't be able to breath this easily. There shouldn't be birds flying around from this high, there shouldn't be more clouds higher up in the distance.

Two half moons looked down on me in all their semi-circular glory. One is a dark shadow that hiding part of the light from the sun, the other as grey and lifeless as a desert with craters, but it shimmers beautifully.

Everything seems new, new legs, new air to breath, new senses to appreciate everything around me. The very ground I walked on feels different, harder yet still more comfortable to walk on.

I simply don't understand how everything here is better. I've practically been glaring at the sun the entire time I've been on earth.

"The longer you stay here the better you will feel and the more you will know. There is knowledge that is inherent to Gaia, like how to calculate time, what the name of a skill you acquire is, things like that.

"Such knowledge seeps into each person on Gaia differently. But if you manage to open your crown chakra you will just instinctively know all the basics of the world."

"My chakra channels are open and fine." I say I instinctively. Having had meditated and gone to spiritual retreats and seeked the advice of spiritualist and advisers.

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I have reached a point in my life where I could call myself zhen, not to be full of myself or anything but my spiritual journey has been short but thorough.

"By the standards of this world you've hardly put a dent into your chakra awakening." Rumeria says into my head.

"But don't let that discourage you. All of you that come from earth might be initially anorexic, but you all have some advantages over us." Mirabilis quickly reputes.

We walk in silence for a little while as I take in what I've so far been told, take in the wonder of the very rocks I walk on. I just can't stop staring at the clouds, the clouds both at me feet and up above the world.

"How is it that you have two skies?" I ask finally, looking at the very silent but clearly very fit Estergon.

It's important for me to know what his 'voice' will sound like in my head, and to develop a line of communication with him. To know what he may be thinking, just in case I will need to take care of these people, if ever they become a danger.

I've been analyzing them as we walked down the twisting path, it's hard not to notice how well balanced they are. How precise their movements and placement of their feet are. Its written all over their bodies that these people are trained acrobatic athletes or trained killers.

I'd bet on the later with the pure aura of no worry they seem to ooze. We are on a huge ass mountain in the boonies so high up that we are above cloud cover, yet these three stroll with contentment likes its a walk in the park.

Definitely trained killers, confident too for them to not be carrying around any visible weapons.

"The second sets of cloud are solid-liquid." Estergon seems to say after a moment of looking at me.

"I don't think I got that right, it sounded like you said solid-liquid to me, your translation device must be malfunctioning."

He grunts and keeps walking, Mirabilis answering for him.

"He means the clouds are substantial." She sees my blank look and nods before waving her hand before me producing a perfect close up image of the clouds.

An imagine that continues zooming until I see an ocean of clouds up in the sky. Clouds roaring and clashing into each other with waves of such power and steam, spraying tiny droplets of water that spread but eventually attract each other again like magnets. Coming together and again being part of the bigger whole.

"That is a solid-liquid, a liquid which has attractive forces so much stronger with each other in comparison with any other substance found naturally in the atmosphere."

I look closely at it and can see that it shines a little in her imagine though its mostly transparent.

"It looks a little like mercury." I say studying the strange phenomenon, a solid-liquid huh, interesting. Basically a huge ass lake in the sky.

"Come, before you get Estergon started about all the knowledge lost by you earthlings that is considered basic here and many differences between the incomplete study of alchemy you call chemistry today." Mirabilis grabs my arm and puts me second after Estergon on the path.

We walk mostly in silence for a few more minutes, everything is still fascinating me but I've mostly gotten my bearings now. That is until I finally reach the bottom cloud cover and walk into the moist white fog right at the heels of the tall silent Estergon.

The cloud is so thick that I'm soaked to the skin in moments, visibility completely compromised but somehow I don't lose my way. I walk following an extra sense I wasn't even aware I had let alone know how to use.

Yet as the deeper I walk the more I realise that this sense is an old friend, and it has saved my life many a times back in the desert. It's what any layman would call, 'following your gut.' This is a set of senses I have subconsciously used all my life, we all do, but most of us have never tap into it as consciously as I currently am.

It's like having eyes but being short sighted, a condition it's easy to survive with in modern society. But still one that makes a person blind to some basic things about their surroundings. The misty cloud itself is refreshing in a way I didn't know I could be refreshed, it's clean and cleansing, probably a steam room effect.

The walk through the mist is another twenty minutes before we are in full, perfect sunlight again. Sunlight that doesn't blind me or scorch my skin. The forest far below is utterly awesome, and I take a moment to stare at the vista in almost stupified wonder.

I've been to the swampy tiger infested islands of India, I've been to the great wall of chine, I have seen the inspiring Niagara Falls, but this definitely takes the cake. The forest is a wonder of colours from greens to yellows to blues and hues of shades of orange.

The trees different, healthier somehow, with more vitality than what I am used to. I can see the top of the tall heads of argentinosaurus at some places between the trees, dinosaurs said to have been extinct millions of years ago.

It's at this point that I fully acknowledge that I'm on another world, that it hits me that this isn't Earth anymore, shit. I really can't believe this is all real, if the air wasn't so fresh I'd probably be light headed right now.

The cries of raptors pierce the sky as they cry out at each other or some prey they see below. We are still so high up that I should see the slight curve of the world in the horizon, but all I see is a vast forest, rivers, lots of grassland between the trees and another mountain that breaks into the strosphere some distance away.

"What the fuck really happened to me!?" I say looking at the three people escorting me with bewilderment and a ting of anger/panic.

Rumeria laughs seemingly happily, his voice crystal clear like something that twinkles in the light. Almost like the sound of chimes in the wind but coming from a human mouth beautifully. I frown at him, maybe my initial assessment of them being human was premature. No human sounds that good when they laugh, not to the extent that it sounds like music.

"Please excuse me." He says with a comfortable smile. "We have an ongoing bet as to how long it takes before a person from your world freaks out. Congratulations, you're the 16 313th person to reach this far before freaking out, you are among the elite.

"Thanks I guess, how many have there been before me? People that have come here from Earth, and how sure are you I can't go back?" I ask looking at them as we continue to hike down.

"We're as sure as you are. Even as we speak knowledge is flowing into you isn't it?" Mirabilis asks rhetorically.

"And you know what's coming to you is truth even if you don't want to accept it as such yet. On this mountain a lie cannot be spoken, we also don't know how but you could try to test that theory." Mirabilis says, her startling eyes piercing into me a moment.

"I believe you." And I do, but I still don't understand why or how, and it's the how that cripples most people from believing in things.

If it can't be rationally explained and confirmed, human beings have a hard time believing it and generally tend to dismiss it. A healthy paranoia acquired from thousands of years of the evolution of ideas, but it still prevents us from enjoying many things. I take a deep breath and center myself in my meditative mantra, calming myself and accepting everything before me. Broadening my mind and my horizons to new heights never before imagined.

We must have walked for hours, four or five at least but my circadian rhythm is out of wack because in all that time the sun has hardly shifted in the sky. The cloud cover above much further up the mountain now, but still it looks like several dozen miles down to the bottom, I doubt we can finish the hike in a single day.

‎ *

‎ After about 16 hours of hiking around the twisting path on the side of the mountain, that occasionally needs a few climbs and jumps, we reach a cave. My leading companion enters the shadowy opening without a moments though. I look around and take my time before deciding I can follow these strangers into dark corners.

The moment I pass the threshold of shadow I can feel the difference between the outside and inside. The air here is cooler, seemingly air conditioned yet the perfectly comfortable temperature on my skin adjusts and I adopt perfectly to this cool air as well.

The cave is shallow but wide enough not to be crowded with 12 people inside. With just the four of us it seems to be more than enough room for everyone to find privacy. Five of us, I readjust as I see another man walk into the cavern from a side tunnel I hadn't noticed before.

He grunts at me while carrying a kid goat across his naked shoulder, blood and all. He puts it on a tiled stone table and starts chopping with knives that suddenly came out of no-where. I look closely at my surrounding again, trying to take nothing for granted.

The is a small stream of water dripping into a stone bowl from somewhere in the wall before over-flowing into a bigger bowl and rolling into the floor. The are a number of stone fashioned tables and partitions. Moss and a type of grass is growing around one area along with a thin black tree.

The area the new man is working on is probably the cooking area, the seems to be some sort of oven built there and two extra tables. There is a large carpet on one of the slightly partitioned sections with pillows scattered around. There are three rolled up sleeping mats next to each other against another partitioned wall. From a former soldier's perspective, the place looks quiet cosy. I can tell it's someone's home though, probably the hairy muscular butcher.

We settle down, I would assume for the night if the sun wasn't defying everything I know stubbornly still shining after so man hours of the day that I've already witnessed pass. I'm introduced to Jonah, who is preparing the food that smells amazing.

We sit on wooden benches along a stone table on which Jonah serves the food. Small plates for everyone but me, I have the biggest share of the simple meal. A meal that consists of a beautifully done slab of meat and a few leaves and fruit.

I eat mostly silently as I'm memorized by the four speaking out loud for the first time. Their voices are captivating and their strange language singsong, flowing. I eat slowly but before I know it my plate is empty and I am more filled that I have ever been after a meal. Not filled as in my stomach is full, but filled with a vitality that feels amazing. Leaving me filled with energy yet I also find myself sweetly drowsy.

After a big drink of water and a trip to what I'm shown is the latrines to relieve myself, I'm shown to a cot to sleep, and I'm blissfully out almost as soon as my head hits the pillow.