Dear Linguist,

What do you think of this dream?

A little girl sits on the edge of a hole in the floor, legs swinging above the abyss. Peering down into it you can see nothing, even if you were to shine a light into it you would see nothing, it absorbs everything. All light, all things, all beings, it selfishly takes it away and keeps it forever. There are only a few other things around the girl, one of which is a light bulb that dangles from a ceiling too far away to see. It weakly illuminates the floor around the hole and allows her to observe her own pale, phantom-like hands. Hands that, in the light, look as if they could pass through anything as if it wasn’t there, her whole appearance really looks as if she could be a ghost because of the way the light reveals her. There are also curtains far off in the distance but the girl does not know that yet, all she can see is the light, the dark and the black-white checkered floor.

It’s obvious that she’s thinking deeply; it makes sense as there’s nothing much else to do. She could try to stand up and walk around, but there isn’t much point to it, and that would mean leaving the safety of the only light source around her. After all who knows what awaits her in the darkness? She doesn’t get hungry or tired here, in fact, she could stay here forever if she wanted. The only other choice she has of course is to let herself fall into the hole and see what happens, but the very thought of it is enough to give anyone vertigo.

At one point. She resolves to stand up and explore the area. Perhaps there might be a better option somewhere out there around her.

That’s when the curtains start to close in.

As she slowly brings herself to her feet, the curtains that were once an unreachable distance away from her start to approach her. Rushing at her in the same way a paper plane glides through the air but much, much faster. Eventually, she sees the curtains but by then they’ve already stopped right in front of her, mere inches away from her face, standing imposingly and obstructing her way forward. Understandably, this shocks her, and as she takes a step backwards, she does so into that dark hole in the ground. With her whole weight shifted down into the abyss, she loses her balance completely. She struggles, trying to rectify this mistake by lunging herself forward and grasping at the floor that might save her.

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But she still falls.

And she keeps falling.

Further and further.

Until she can no longer see the light.

That very moment when that light disappears from her sight, she opens her eyes and finds herself sitting back in the very position she was in before she decided to stand. Perplexed, she stares down anxiously at her ghostly legs and the hole.

Once again, they’re swinging above the abyss.

This is the condition of the character at present.

There are only two other things that you should know about this situation. Things about the nature of this place and what might happen if she chose something else.

One. If she chose to drop herself into the abyss once again, the same thing would happen, she would open her eyes and find herself dangling above that cursed, pointless hole. She could do this another thousand times. Nothing would change. Even with another thousand, she would end up in the same place she was in the beginning. Confused, scared, and on the edge of the abyss.

Two. If she chose to stand her ground as the curtains approached her and pushed through them into the other side, she would disappear completely. The curtains are heavy and would resist her efforts, it would push her back, warning her to not proceed any further, but she will eventually find the strength to pass through them. She will pass through them, and she will cease to exist here. She will disappear, and we will never see her again.

Now tell me Linguist, what does this mean? What is the hole?

Yours truly, Dreamer.