I was thinking about _ as I lay stretched out before the sky, massive and intimidating, ready to absorb me like an atom to a black hole.
The grass beneath me was the only think that kept me from falling into the blueness, the infinite, the perfect void… I felt dizzy, my whole body felt as though it was mimicking the vastness, expanding, as I stared, deeper and deeper and deeper forever, until I was just as huge to beyond massive as the sky.
I felt the weight of my body against the grass, as impacts of running feet shot through the earth, less dense than I…
The running feet passed by, my eyes too locked into the void to look, and then, through the impossibly long call of the sky, I faintly heard happy screams as two people jumped into a large body of water.
"Juniper!" I heard it but did not feel it, my body still too massive to feel anything around me.
"Juniper!" Came the laughing voice again. A massive powerful voice, from a fainter distance was laughing.
I tried to look in that direction of infinity and felt something change. My arms couldn't move. My head couldn't turn. I slowly felt panic seep into the weight of my psyche.
"Juniper?" I heard far larger running feet, slower in motion and far heavier; but by orders of immense magnitude not as heavy as I…
Voices slowly swirled into me, more than one, I felt tiny hands touch me on my hands and face. Finally, after some time, someone tried to pick me up… Almost as painful in it's suddenness, I felt the sensation of infinite weight and mass snap disconnectedly.
My eyes, unaccustomed to the smallness of my world and people, slowly adjusted to the light, lower on the ground than in the sky.
I felt large feet, feeling small inside, carrying me.
"Holland?" I mumbled with dull mouth and soft teeth. Holland stopped. "Juniper, you wouldn't answer!"
I moved my legs under the cotton folds. "I'm alright now," I managed. "Put me down."
Holland did so. We were standing on the shore of the lake. There were littles in the water, splashing each other. The mountains on all sides loomed comfortably.
I turned, and there was the edge of the forest. The trees were impossibly tall, far taller than on Earth XXII. On that surface, the trees were fake, and more akin to what they were on the dead planet far away.
I looked up at Holland. Named for a country on the first surface, he was enormous as his namesake. Blonde, fair, and with caring, careful green eyes, he smelled like liquorish and summer flowers.
I slowly walked back to the barn with Holland. I grieved my experience, thinking about how it felt to have the weight and mass of a surface in space, enough to not be able to move.
Just floating in space, gently drifting, trusting in the pilots to keep me safe from harm; mindless and originless, no memory, no meaning… It was a lovely feeling, one to cherish forever…
Holland was looking at me. "You were big again, weren't you?"
I smiled weakly up at him with closed eyes.
He said, "as the elders say, it is wise to experience things… it may teach you about yourself. But it is not real," he took from his massive shorts pocket a banana.
He held it gently, careful not to break it. We have an inside, but the outside is still important. "Don't get stuck inside," the quote ended. STARONE say, we both remembered.
I looked at the damp earth under our feet, as the trees towered above us, hundreds of feet of living mass, and felt a small amount of shame.
I hated to leave my mind. But yes, I didn't want to get stuck.
Gracen and Faerne's voices came through the trees. I heard Gracen say something about Drace in a worshipful voice, and Holland laughed softly under his breath to not be heard.
We walked for some time before reaching a clearing, one of few.
The sky. I looked up. There came from above a faint trail of light. It slowly arced on it's way down, an impossibly long trail, scratching the sky like a needle on a record; I couldn't make out the color of the point of light that seared the sky on it's way down to the surface… Golden? Blue? Perhaps it was just light.
Holland and I watched in awe, as the trail behind the point of light slowly ripped open the sky. Wider and wider from the point upwards.
The point arced, as though intelligent and seeing, slowly; towards the ground at our feet.