It’s bright. It’s bright. Where… It’s…

A young man feels the light of the sun past his eyelids. There is an odd feeling on his skin; a soft wind flowing across his entire body.

What is… What is all… What’s…

The young man tries to open his eyes. His body feels new, fresh, and vital, as if he was born just moments ago. He tries to slowly open his eyes. He blinks a few times in order to shake the sleepiness away. He stares blankly at the sky above him. However, it is not a view he is familiar with. Above him, he sees a series of monumental structures standing high in the sky reaching out towards the bright sun. These structures are white, as if they were the large bones of some kind of massive skeleton. He continues to blink.

He notices that these bone white structures have blue features. These are leaves. His eyes start to tremble. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. He lifts his head to examine his body that seems to be lying in the middle of a forest right now, if only to verify that what he is feeling is the truth. That wind…

Oh. Oh shit…

He is not imagining things right now, he is completely naked. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any hair on his body. He touches his head, his eyebrows, his eyelids and finds not a single hair present.

He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know what’s happening.

“So. You’re awake then.”

He looks to his left to find that a woman is sitting with her hands holding her knees in an effort to hide her naked body. He almost did not recognize her because just like him, she has no hair on her head, no eyebrows, no eyelashes… She is Shaula, his best friend.

“Shaula. What is this? What is going on here?”

“You remember, right? Do you remember our English exam?”

Oh no.

The memories of his time in that classroom rush into his mind. There was pain, so much pain in those few minutes. He underwent more physical torment than he has ever gone through before. His bones broke through his skin, his muscles tore apart, his own nerves sent him into shock.

Then, for a brief moment, he saw something unimaginably complex. It was a map of the universe, specifically a glimpse of a portion of that map, a pathway between the planet Earth and a planet that neither of them know about.

“Wait. No, wait. So, we’re there? We’re on that… that place that’s so far away from… Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no! My parents, Rita… oh my god!”

Shaula looks down with a face reflecting her sadness. In truth, Shaula had lost everyone in her life long before the day of her English exam. Her parents died when she was a baby, her foster parents died a few years ago, and she has no remaining friends from her childhood. The only person who eventually became the most important person in her life, Ajax, is here with her. But while Shaula has already processed the pain of losing everyone, Ajax is going to be feeling that pain right now.

Unfortunately, now is not the time to process what he has lost.

“Shaula, my God, th-this can’t be real. Th-This isn’t happening right now, is it? How can this really be happening!?”

Ajax feels a wave of deep anguish. There are butterflies in his stomach and he feels the bile coming up as he suppresses the urge to vomit out his frustrations. He does not know how to process this moment. He wants to die. He wants to die immediately so he does not have to deal with this pain. He has to die now, he has to die.

Ajax’s breathing increases its pace. He starts hyperventilating as he moves past the immediate suicidal ideation. He considers what his sister is going to feel about his disappearance, more realistically, his death. His parents, how would they cope with losing a child? He had always known that the biggest pain a parent can feel is outliving their children. At this moment, he wishes he was unloved, he wishes his parents were capable of moving past his death, but he is not stupid. He believes in his heart that his parents love him.

In truth, even now, Ajax believes that he will return home one day. He does not know how, but he feels in his heart that he will return home. He has to. He cannot envision a future where he never sees his family again. He just cannot picture such a horrific fate and so, things are not hopeless for him. The immediate problem is, what if his parents have their lives shattered because of his death? What if his sister has a poor childhood after losing him? He has to get home as soon as possible. He cannot let them face that pain. He cannot.

“Shaula, h-how do we g-get back? How do we–”

“Ajax, I know what you must be feeling right now. But, we have to move. Right now.”

“...Huh?”

Ajax’s mind slows to a halt by her sudden request of him. He had been considering only his family, only their future, only their pain, while ignoring the situation they find themselves in. Shaula is considering the future, specifically, how they can survive and live to see tomorrow.

“Ajax. I have been careful. I have been looking around and testing my body. I think that I can see, hear and smell a lot better than I could back… home.”

“Our… senses are that much better here?”

“I really don’t know why but it’s like our bodies were super charged or given, like, fucking super powers or something. I could see things running through the tree branches a hundred stories above our heads. I can hear things like half a kilometer away. I tried to wake you when I started to hear more scary shit but you were basically comatose at that point.”

“A-Ah, alright, I guess.”

“You try it out as well, you need to get used to this just like I have.”