Have you ever fallen in a dream? 

Watched, waited, as the world collapsed? 

In the waking world falls tend to startle.

But the fall of dream is different.

It is as long as it is short and ends when it begins. Its flimsy grip can be felt ripping apart our layers of being.

We think we scream- maybe we do, but we can never seem to be sure.

Yet this fall cannot contain any hint of horror or malice. Something in it, or about it, feels comforting- or maybe that’s not the word.

Perhaps it is the thought of the fall and not the fall itself that is the problem.

Because the fall itself is magnificent and terrifying; a clash of comfort and pain, surreal and the sane. There is something about this, something familiar.

Yes, the girl thinks, something about this is familiar. It reminds her of some scent. The kind that stops you in your tracks, reminds you of a concept you can’t seem to clasp your memory around. It’s right there, out of reach yet within the field of your conscious attention.

Like a soft cloud, dense cloud.

But the thick gray around her heaves and gives way to more questions as dim but visible situations arise. Memories, perhaps- but certainly not those of our protagonist. Then again, as soon as she realizes these memories are not hers, they seem to spark and scatter, leaving behind faint new scenes that are similar with a single difference; she herself is now in them. Now this, of course, is quite ridiculous. The impostor within the wall of the wall lacks any necklace, let alone a pencil-shaped one. Still, we wonder…

The girl sees this self who is not her own, and all her emotions begin to dissolve. They vanish, into what we do not know, but in their place a new thing blossoms; curiosity. New? Perhaps not fully. But new enough, in that it has been so long since she’d felt it she now fails to recognize it.

The motion around her is odd and satisfying.

Her focus turns to it, softens, and we join her in seeing what she sees.

What does the fall show her?

It shows her showing her self to the world. First in the form of a book, its material transparent, more so than her. The thing changes, too; first in color then in shade, then in shape and form and age. This shifting book blooms into a tome, finally; a thick volume of who knows what brimming with mysterious messages.

The imaginary readers of the book smile. The girl holding the book smiles. Then she fades away.

Back in the real world- that is to say, real in relation to the vision just witnessed, the actual girl cannot breathe. Shuddering, she feels her breaths slicing themselves into unreasonable thicknesses. The widths are off by several margins.

She tries to scream but her voice is swallowed whole by the whirl around her.

“This can’t be happening,” she must be thinking. “I’m too young to die.” But if this was what she were thinking, it would not make sense at all. “How so,” she would ask in this overly complex hypothetical situation in which she were thinking that thing and had heard our comment. “Well,” we would answer- or at least begin to try to. “Do you not die every day of your life? Is dying not what makes living a thing? If you were not dying you could not be alive.” Silence is the only reply that we might then hope for.

But this is of course hypothetical and pure speculation. Let us return to the girl and her reality.

The memories that are not memories turn out to be stubborn. They continue to flood the walls of her fall. She continues to react to them the same way she always does; closing her eyes and turning away.

Another thing all these visions seem to have in common, at least at first glance, is that every single one of them is abound with missing pieces. We can make out the deep black voids within the streaks of gray.

Like some abandoned jigsaw puzzle gathering dust since its last touch.

This filling of the scene persists until the speed at which she has been falling decreases in what must be exact proportion to the increase in her rejection of what she is seeing.

In a flash of understanding, she lets go.

She sighs, closes eyes, thinks- or tries- to lift her hands towards the sky.

Viscous colors abandon their fingertips. They swirl into the funneling thing, coloring new errant visions in unsettling ways.

If you fill a glass with water, winds will always make it sound. Until the water is out, all the water, there can be no silence. This is not good or bad, as the boy would say, it all depends on what you want.

The girl scoffs. This noise produces a slight waver in the air, shaking the visions around her. What does this mean? Probably nothing. But don’t quote me on that.

There is no rest to be had; only things, and the things that exist exist for her and her alone. These are the shadows in the back of her mind. These are the thoughts she tries to escape. Thoughts- thoughts are things, truly. And one cannot escape what one oneself is.

When we think we know, we fail to fall. It is only when we fall that we know and not think- we know only that we are falling and are pulled into that present. It is in this state that we must be when we empty ourselves out, for if we skip the shadow of apparently insignificant hope or desire, we might as well burn down the forest and bomb the world.

We think about that last line, and where it came from.

What are we?

The girl, it seems, is ready to ask herself the same.

Not about us, though. She begins to turn herself. Altering her position, she manages to traverse the falling swirl. Pencils, colored, form within her palms. Using these she starts adding in the missing pieces.

In this way she fills out the swirl around her.

When she does not know, she improvises, lets go but tries. This is where she shines- this is about letting it all out, no rules, no restrictions! Nobody to judge or condemn, to tell you what’s wrong, or even right. There are no such things here in the fall- here in the storm.

The holes in the back of the brain cling where they lack the inability to willingly remain intact. But the girl, spurred on by the bliss of creation, locates each of them. Banishing them to the past, she births new bits of scenery. False memories of someone else living some other life.

Wondrous creation! The joy of one’s own birth echoes backward in time, reaching us only once we are capable of understanding.

But we digress.

The girl goes on, and on, continuing to create as she breaks all restrictions.

Now then that the time is full as well as the scenery that surrounds, now is when we can finally see what it is we were watching. The meaning- the manufactured meaning, as all meaning is- creates the reality we watch on the walls. This meaning is weak, now; it has barely been born and can’t possibly walk. The struggle to move and grow dawns on it. But it does not care.

It is only once the girl succeeds in clearing out her mind completely that the gray fades away, the clouds part and the sight of green trees greets her.

A sense of freedom swallows her.