There were some things I had noticed in my time here so far.
Firstly, there was no sun, no moon, and no stars. And while the nights were dark, for some reason the days were still bright, as if something else was providing the light.
Secondly, the fisherman would come at the same time every day, always three-quarters through the day. Sometimes he came to fish, sometimes just to relax. Each time, he never spoke a word.
And finally, and most strangely of all, I noticed that this world was changing...
It started 17 days after I arrived.
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The previous night, I witnessed a flash of light in the distance. It only lasted for about a second or two, but it was impossible to miss. One thing I'll note is that, for some reason, it was impossible for me to fall asleep, and I never felt tired either. I mean, it’s not like I was even able to close my 'eyes' or whatever I was seeing with, to begin with. But as a result, during the nights, I could feel the passing of each and every second. Back to the main topic, at the start of the next morning, I could see a new tree on the hill on the other side of the lake—a tree that wasn’t there before. And oddly enough, it was fully grown, as if it had always been there. I could’ve just played it off as a trick of the ‘eye’, but this wasn't the only time this happened.
There didn't seem to be any pattern to this phenomenon—no specific time or anything like that. But every few days or so, something new would show up in the landscape. A new tree, some new patches of grass, or some new rocks that weren't there before. Little by little, things seemed to get less and less barren, and the world around me seemed to become more and more populated.
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And then one day, I saw something interesting...
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It happened late one day while I was watching the landscape in front of me. Then suddenly, I saw another beam of light. Nothing came of it—at least, at first.
But a few minutes later, a fish suddenly lunged itself out of the water in front of me. It was the first animal I had seen since I got here. But for some reason, it didn’t act like a normal animal. I watched the fish attempt to use its fins to propel itself further, as if it wanted to leave the lake. It was a puzzling sight to behold, to say the least.
Eventually, however, the fish retreated back into the water, presumably to breathe. But after that, the fish continued to pull itself out of the water, over and over and over again. For hours upon hours on end. It must be a very persistent fish, I assumed.
When the fisherman returned for his daily visit, his catch was right there waiting for him. But strangely, the fish seemed to look content. Perhaps for this fish, even death was preferable to being trapped in this place.
Speaking of which, there was something lingering in my mind that I couldn’t help but think about: Was it even possible for me to even die? I couldn’t be considered alive in a traditional sense. But I began to wonder: what would happen if, for instance, someone took a chisel or a pickaxe or something and cracked me open? Or what if someone picked up a giant weight, dropped it on me, and shattered me into a bunch of pieces? Or even dynamite, for that matter, if I were blown into smithereens. Could I survive any of this? I wasn’t sure. I was hoping to find out. At the very least, it would be something different from how things were.
I did not see the fisherman for a few days after that, so I guessed that he must've had a filling meal. But eventually, he returned, and so things continued on as they had. At least they did for a little while. But the past hundred days or so turned out to merely be the calm before the storm, in a literal sense. It began when I saw something that I hadn't seen in this world before: a snowflake.