A Place of Retreat

(Phy Report #0022: 11th October 1956)

An environmental phenomenon has been observed. It is in the western outer skirts of the city of Rao, the capital of Gader. A forest has blossomed with no witness testimony to when and how it came about. Esteemed geographers and scholars of forestry return no hypothesis or explanation on how this could happen. The biome stretches for 2,231 square kilometres, and now it makes up about 4% of Gader’s entire landmass.

This Phy is a colourful forest biome. Approximately all ten million colours that the human eye can distinguish have been perceived there. During intensive observations throughout the entire forest, no animal has been discovered. Another observation made is that when a gust of wind hits an area in the forest, the hue of the leaves and plants change into a different colour at a slow rate. There is no pattern to which colour it changes to.

I walked, then began turning it into a plod as I went down some hill, located on the western outskirts of the city. Empty and aloof, I seek my place of refuge, away from the addicting poison of the limelight. Crossing a street that no car passes, I protrude through the bushes that sit adjacent to the road. They extend even further than the artificial concrete and asphalt.

Ever since discovering that place, it amazes me in a perplexing way how barely any person has the balls to visit it, or at least take a look — apart from the EIO, but what place are they not in? Seems like the power of rumours doesn’t get through me anymore. It’s either recklessness or cynicism, but I stopped thinking about myself a while ago. Anyway, cuts appear and heal, and rustling fills my ears as I battle my way through the twigs and small branches in this giant shrub. Or maybe, it’s a chain of bushes that I’m travelling through vertically, and not toward the other side.

Or, maybe, I’m sinking, slowly and foolishly, into a different dimension, a place I am not supposed to be and not welcomed in, and as I go further, my chance of turning back to my earth withers away to an impossibility. But, there may be a brighter wonderland ahead of me. Probably alien, but probably better. All I can do is continue inwards and wade out the now…

Rustling continues, passion dies, and the lump grows and concentrates.

I make it out in the end. I look back at it, surprised at how much longer it took to go through it than before. I stand for a moment, then wobble from side to side, getting leaves off of my upper baggy and beige art. I look down, noticing that it's accompanied by a lower black piece, with custom embroidery of white lighting, decorated by a blue shadow, stretching down towards the leg openings.

…I remember liking this when I bought it and wore it. But now, I’m not even in the space between liking or disliking, but a space convinced of the foolishness of both, actively discouraging me from making the effort to. I indulge myself, and it feels good at the time, and inside, I validate… something. It’s out of language’s grasp, but it is felt, and it is there. The neurons fire and they conceptualise it in such a complex manner that the body, and thus the world, could never catch up to it, let alone explain it. Yet, I know it is there, and I sense it. But it cannot be explained. Maybe for the better, or the worse, or maybe it’s just there and beyond our constructs. I haven’t reached an answer through all my centuries, and I don't know if I could. I'm bogged down by making myself go to the umpteenth establishment, engaging in manufactured value, in all its inhuman forms…

Deliberation for today has reached its limit. Another thought amidst many thoughts won’t budge me any more than the same other five million did. I lumber forward into the trail; two paralleled chains of nearly equal-sized stones decorate the path which I now stroll through. It took me so long to find, but it is kinda satisfying to see!

At the whims of my unconscious, intangible, bleak feelings and thoughts emerge; my little grin succumbs and I now plod. I make the effort to consider cultivating the energy to tilt my head and see what’s around me. It does not register anyway. All I know is that the adjacent objects cast a wall between me and the sunlight. Walking. Walking. Still walking. Plodding. Plodding. It should be nice, and I should feel good. So why am I still empty?

Light opens up at the end of the row of trees, inviting me. I stood, mesmerised, atop a small hill that’s at the end of my path, where I always stop to take the scenery in. Without fail, my jaw drops at the miracle of its existence.

Wind blows and colours flash in an elegant melody. Radiant sunlight seems to get brighter, like it’s welcoming me, and I begin to stand straight and fix my posture. A burst of energy shoots in me and I unrelentingly run down the small hill towards it, with a smile cutting through my cheeks. Whispers of the gleaming floras invite me, and I jump without concern into their arms and their bright, glistening splash of colours. I slowly descend through the bush I’m on top of and break twigs away from their mothers, eventually landing on the ground. Dirt splatters on my bright beige sweater, and some of it go on my wavy puff of light brown hair; the smile entrenched in me does not falter. I chuckle to myself as I lay on the ground, then stand up.

Whilst walking, the musical creaks of branches grace my ears from all directions, and with every step, snaps and cracks arise beneath my feet. The brown foundation of the trees gives each infinitesimal leaf the stage for its flamboyant performance, and the blessed beholder gets to watch this infinite theatre.

A rush of wind hits, and leaves blow past me

“You, are, good... mate?”

A deep voice, as if it came out of depths beyond one’s diaphragm, resembling a child’s attempt at conjuring language, comes out of the air.

“Oh, hiya!” I reply to them, “Been a while since you came around. What’s up with you?”

“Going up down, the forest. Breezing through. Good time. Black everything sometime.”

“Right. What’s this 'black everything?'”

“Know not. Come.”

An invisible force envelopes me, and I start to float within its natural control; I relax my body.

“Tote?”

“No, just a second. I want to walk for a bit. Explore more of the place, y’ know? I barely took the time to actually look around.” The wind puts me down on grass that's changing hue slower than before.

“Fun.” Wind blasts off at a speed that seemed reserved, waiting to finally be let go. The place went back to its quiet.

Wandering and wandering. A smile is stuck on my face and I don’t know where I am!

What’s that thing?

Its stem is green, dark and boring. But a shine sits upon that foundation, and emerges before my eyes, in an unchanging, pure blue. Glimmering petals, opening and closing in real time, guard a shining rose-coloured sphere. Floating, unconcerned.

What is this thing?! On second thoughts, keep your mystery! Watching you exist is enough!

Wandering and wandering.

Fungus? Or a... mushroom? A mushroom is standing upright, situated on my left. It towers over me and blocks my sight — this is most definitely eight times my size, in every dimension. A bite. Many bites alloy themselves on it: each side I choose to look at displays bite marks as big as a head in width. I look into the distance: A chain of mushrooms stretches… Up the hill, and down… And up… The row it makes is still uniform despite the path it traverses. Too uniform… Perfectly uniform.

Wondering… Musing… Sweat forms. Angst takes the opportunity to rush into my broken mind. It’s not even the danger that threatens me. It’s the… mystery. How something like this could be here, and the possibilities of what else lies beyond the abyss that I don’t know... What is this thing?

“Hey.”

The silence pounces to devour me.

“Hey! Please, take me to Tote now.”

“Coming.” A cold wind from the heavens approaches from behind me, making me levitate upwards.

“Oh! Oh, thank you mate! If I stayed there for another minute, I could’ve lost myself!”

“Okay. Nice. Tote?”

I smile. Its inability to use language well makes me wonder — the wind being under my administration may have had something to do with it. Anyway, it made me think that this fresh and pure consciousness has a lot of catching up with the rest of us, but it doesn’t have to. I hope it doesn’t.

After about five minutes of being able to fucking fly, I reach my destination. Tote is not far from where I was, wherever that was. They put me down, signalling their leave with a puff of wind on my back. The wind leaves me to stand there, in a circular area, barren of trees, but abundant in grass and flora that stand to my knees. A statue is in front of me.

“Been a while, fella!” I shout and wail my arms upwards, with no reaction back. Every time I call for them, I ponder where they could be before they manifest. A place somewhere in this universe or a dimension outside of ours? Perhaps I should ask.

There's no response yet, and I sit on the grass in front of them. They’re not meant to represent humans, that's for sure. They’re animated and perfect, even when they can’t move. A face that’s always smiling. Their eyes are closed in a rainbow shape due to their perpetual grin, where they don’t have any teeth showing. I cannot see what their body is like, due to a cape enveloping everything that isn’t their head. Only hands poke through the opening of the neck, situated on their cheek as if they’re flushed. Perhaps they don’t have a body: the artist envisioned them specifically with a cape. And so, the Tote without a cape doesn’t exist in this timeline I guess... What exists though is lively colour-changing moss texturing the cape, and their bald head, and their asymmetrically sculpted ears, and their hands, and pretty much every single thing that isn’t in the way of its perfect and rusted face.

They are taking much more time than they usually do to come back here. Imagination takes the wheel. Tote now has legs that are double its current 7 feet height, and they are in space.

Currently, in pitch darkness, between stars, one of them is about to become a, a supernova in 10, earth minutes, millions of light years away. Tote traverses through the emptiness, with only random arrangements of asteroids serving as the only pieces of land he can seek refuge in. They happen to be close enough for Tote to disregard their life and take a leap of faith in zero gravity-

“Yo. Brotha.”