Eventually, reality settled itself, at least to a degree. In what flashes of thoughts he had, Tedrick thought about what it could be that caused this. It was clearly some kind of hallucination. Some condition, maybe? He definitely had to see the doctor, but what was he to tell them? Perhaps he should keep it vague.

It was only when he set his next course of action that he opened his eyes, determined to set right whatever this hiccup in his plans for his future happened to be. But he wasn’t home, inside or outside of the room with a broken door. He was somewhere… Yellow, a weirdly familiar yellow, curled up in some kind of weird fetal position.

Okay.

Breath.

Calm down.

Five seconds in, eight seconds out.

Repeat.

So maybe the hallucination wasn’t over. Maybe he wouldn’t be going anywhere himself. Really, he probably shouldn’t be anyway. Even if the hallucination stopped, it could have started again at any time. Yeah, no change in plans. This is what the necklace thing was for, right?

Reaching up to where the LifeAlarm necklace he was given should be hanging, because his parents would certainly never be around to help if something went wrong, he found nothing. Felt nothing. Shit. Could hallucinations affect all senses at once? Why was this happening?! Five in eight out repeat.

What the fuck was he supposed to do here?!

Patting his chest vigorously to try and find it, he soon spread his search to feeling the area around him. Maybe it…?

Then he noticed that the thing he was in was soft. Ridiculously soft. In fact, it reminded him of…

A flower, he realized as one of the petals supporting him were pushed away when he patted it, and most of it fell apart like it was barely holding onto supporting him in the first place. It was a massive yellow flower, with large hexagonal petals and a second layer of soft red petals that were much smaller and were a teardrop shape.

This was all, of course, instant. Or just about. Which was good, because less than a second after that he wouldn’t be able to process much of anything when something flooded his mind.

Not exactly sounds, not really, but more like a medley of every sensation at once. Like a strobe light, almost, but instead of different colors it was messages. Feelings, sounds, images in his head like his own imagination before vanishing an instant later to be replaced with another and another and another, even tastes flooded his mind. It was everything.

It was too much.

Too much.

It hurt. It hurt like nothing he could have even begun to imagine, like his mind was being torn into a million directions at once.

He couldn’t even hear his own scream as he twisted and thrashed, throwing open the remaining petals, ravishing whatever structural integrity remained, and dropping him. He had to escape these sensations that dominated his mind. Off. Off.

OFF.

Two important things happened simultaneously. The overwhelming flood of senses stopped as suddenly as it started. And he realized he was moving very, very quickly.

Not down, but backwards. Propelled by…

Wings?

This thought barely had time to register before he slammed spine first into the hard trunk of a tree, knocking his breath from him violently. He started falling again until he saw the ground, and just like that he was jerked up and to the side, the whiplash making his neck ache. He hit something again. Much softer this time thankfully. A big leaf that looked like an elephant ear, but was an odd blue-green.

This reprieve was short lived before the leaf dropped him, but it gave him precious moments of stability. He took this chance to do what he always did when he had panic attacks.

Observe his surroundings. Notice individual things and feelings.

A tree, bigger than anything he’d ever seen except perhaps those monstrous ancient sequoia trees that were centuries old.

The flower he woke up in, now in significantly worse shape than previous.

The leaf he was on. It seemed one solid color, but in reality seemed to have waves of more blue or more green running through it. Subtle but beautiful.

The leaf was slipping. One more thing.

Wings.

On him.

His wings.

He had wings, somehow. His mind began to push into overdrive to try to understand what was happening. But not only did the ache in his back remind him how bad an idea it was, but that was also the fast track to another panic attack. What was important was that right now, as the leaf finally lost its strength and dropped him, he had wings. They seemed to be extremely sensitive, responding very quickly to the slightest impulse.

The ground rushed at him.

Deep breath.

Five. Eight.

Up.

Another rough wave of whiplash snapped his head down. Shit! Too up, too up! He managed to slow them down. So much so that they didn’t properly support him anymore, but did significantly slow his fall. He almost corrected it again to try and stay in place, but he’d have to maintain that. Better to land. Five, eight, breathe.

After a nerve wracking two or three seconds of focusing on making his wings not fling him wildly away, he landed. The grass, like everything else, was massive. It was all the way up to his shoulders at its lowest and far taller than him at its highest, a seemingly random mix of dull colors.

But wait, something wasn’t right. Waking up, pain, falling… Landing.

Landing. On his legs. He heard a soft gasp, himself he idly realized, as he stared down at himself. Tentatively brought a leg up. Down. Took a step. His hand raised to his lips as tears began to form in his eyes. They… Worked. It had been twelve years since he could feel… This. Do this.

An overwhelming sense of elation began to rise up in his chest, and took another step. Then another. Then another. Faster. Faster.

He was running again. And damn fast if he did say so.

Or at least he would until he turned at the stem of a flower, and came face-to-mandibles with an ant looking creature that came all the way up to his waist.

Oh. Right. He was still in this strange alien place full of giant… Everything. Was it giant, though? Or was he…?

The click of mandibles brought him out of his day dream as the creature advanced on him, slow and cautious. He let out a soft “ah” of realization and once again jerked straight up in the air roughly. Okay. No extreme emotions, positive or negative. He’d even managed to completely lose track of where he was previously… Shit. Time to figure out hovering in place.

It took several minutes of jerking in random directions as he overcorrected, even running into a branch, but he eventually figured it out, and slowly raised himself to sit on the same branch. Okay. He was in control.

Time to take stock of what he knew.

One: He was in a place which, proportionally, was much bigger than him.

Two: He had never seen this place before, and even with his new perspective, he had never seen any of these creatures or plants before.

Three: When he woke up, he experienced… Things. So many things it overwhelmed him. But now that he thought about it, it seemed like those things weren’t random at all: some of the sounds were like wind making plants rub against each other, but more. Like he wasn’t just hearing the plant, but… What it was saying. Experiencing.

Plants did communicate actively all the time. He learned about that some time ago. They used chemical signals. A common one is the smell of freshly cut grass actually being more or less plant screaming.

There were… Birds. Bird chirping. But when he experienced it waking up, it wasn’t just chirping, it was… Not words exactly, but meanings. “Get away from my nest,” “predator alert,” “I’m hungry, feed me.” Yeah, that sounded like birds.

Okay. Revising that list.

One: He was in a place which, proportionally, was much bigger than him.

Two: He had never seen this place before, and even with his new perspective, he had never seen any of these creatures or plants before.

Three: He could… Somehow understand the intended messages of those things that communicate.