“…”

I woke up to the not so quiet sound of roaring waters and birds carelessly harmonizing in the distance, coaxing me to lift my body. My memory was almost as hazy as the all-enveloping mist that surrounded me, yet my body was lighter than I’d ever felt it before.

I let out a little grunt-moan as I fixed myself into a sitting position.

“Where in the world…?” Upon sitting up, I found myself somewhat able to actually comprehend my surroundings. I was on a large tree with leaves that drooped like a willow’s and sturdy branches that reached out into oblivion, attempting to grasp a collective of rushing waters that ran down into an abyss that was just below my position on the tree—I was saddled over one of those many sturdy branches.

In a way, it was like… like I was sitting on the edge of the world.

The tree was attached to a nearby cliff, which, itself, was attached to a gargantuan pillar of earth that pierced through the heavens like a spear custom-made for some Greek god or goddess. It was an otherworldly sight. A mountain that extended past the limits of the fluffy clouds that caressed its sides, subsequently blocking the ground from my vision...

There was nothing like it on Earth.

“Grgh… what’s going on?!” I was at an utter loss, so I bemoaned a confusion driven and irritated inquisition and fluffed my hair, keeping my eyes fixed on the horizon a while before closing them and taking a deep breath.

Finding some new confidence in the breath, I coerced myself to inquire further. “C’mon, April! You’ve gotta remember what you were doing before you ended up… wherever you are.” So, following my own shoddy and cliched words of encouragement—that were made in third-person, no less—I rewinded my mind in an attempt to figure out how I ended up in my unique predicament.

✦✧✦

I had a plan that I was expecting to carry out as the rainy days of April were surpassed by the onstarting May blooms. I was going to see the country a little bit.

I was a recently turned eighteen year-old. Popular, athletic, intelligent… well above average in most aspects. At least, I was all of those things when I was in school.

I’d dropped out just months before my graduation—just over a week prior to my current time—and had thrown all of those fallacies away.

April 22 to be exact. The day of my birthday. The reason why my given name was April. And the day I got fed up with it all.

If I’m being completely transparent, I had no idea what I was thinking at the time, but looking back on it, I couldn’t really say I regretted my decision. I was sitting in English class, not paying attention to whatever we were meant to be doing, when we were evidently told that we’d have to stand up and recount an experience where we’d truly felt alive. I wasn’t paying attention, of course.

So, when I was finally called up, I had no perceived other option than to pull out the flustered, bubble-brain act that I relied on all too heavily throughout my school life. Luckily, however, the girl sitting behind me had my back and filled me in on the assignment through a brief fifteen second or so explanation before I headed up to the class and also before I’d have to pull that familiar act. Turned out, I wasn’t utterly screwed just yet.

I mean, the assignment was easy enough. I just had to talk about what made me feel alive. That was it. But then…

I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head.

Sure, I’d probably had something that I could’ve said that would have sufficed, or in the very least, I’d had something I could’ve made up. But something inside me finally clicked into a forgotten place, and for no apparent reason, I found myself questioning a number of things.

Well… really, it was only two things—two questions.

Question #1 was the way too obvious question of, “Why couldn’t I think of anything?”

However, that question was an easy one that I’d found the answer to in my following question.

Question #2—the question that was also the answer—if I’m correctly recalling it, I think I said it out loud. On my way towards the front of the whole class, but still (coincidentally) in a position where everyone could hear me I said...

“Why the hell am I wasting my time with this crap?” School… Conformity… “This crap”. It was the reason. The reason I couldn’t immediately answer my first question. It was the reason I couldn’t think of a time I’d truly felt alive. After all, there wasn’t a time. Was there? Everything up until that point in my life was so occupied by planning for a time where I might feel alive that I’d ignored the present time I was living. It was only a normal life I’d had. Society… it likes normal and shuns the strange so, in an essence, I was just conforming like everyone else.

Up until that point, the only ‘time’ there was was time wasted doing mundane and pointless nonsense like recalling an experience where I’d truly felt alive for a group of other conformists wasting their lives as well. What the hell would answering such a thing possibly benefit me with? What would it benefit others with? Nothing.

It was stupid. It was mindless. It was that useless filler that was always carelessly shoved into the plot of so many good shows—that stuff nobody ever truly liked and that was just used to build up to the supposed ‘good stuff’ only to inevitably let you down because your blissful ignorance was better than that ‘good stuff,’ which didn’t even exist and was instead just the same as everything else. And it was the last assignment I’d ever have to listen to at that school.

I marched out of the room, drove home, and quit high school the following day, then cried about it the following night scorning myself for acting so rashly. I didn’t end up regretting the decision, but I sure did at the time.

Now, the question arises after someone quits something like school—Why? Well, the answer was simple. Although I appeared to be a social and athletic run-of-the-mill girl, the truth of the matter was that that image of me was only a facade that I donned around school. The true me didn’t really care about those I was made to hang around, so I didn’t hang around.

Sure, those people would be nice, reliable, and almost all you’d want from a ‘friend,’ but they were also artificial. I’d thought about the first time someone approached me to talk, and I’d discerned that I was only approached because of my many merits. If I was an isolated, ugly, and dumb girl, would they have even approached me? Probably not.

Then again, I guess I shouldn’t judge them. I was likely the fakest person in my school. It was my fault that they all saw me artificially. If I was a good and real person, I’d go hang out with all the ‘losers’ who sit alone or don’t talk to anyone—who shelter themselves within a world apart from ours.

They were losers, but they were true to themselves. I admired that.

Besides, outside of school, I was basically a loser myself, so why had I even bothered faking it for so long? I just wanted to fit in with everyone else, I suppose…

I’d always hated that about the world. It encourages you to be subservient to social norms and discourages adventurous spirits. What was there to be adventurous about?

The only things you have even the slightest ability to feel adventurous towards are your hobbies and passions—the things meant to carve the way into your future. Those things which would likely entail sitting in one place honing your skills or working yourself for eighty percent of your lifespan only to find a worthless end when your body no longer has the ability to function at the conclusion of those many years of relentless working.

Those things are not adventures.

The realization of all that stuff… It drove a divide between my soul and reality. Realism was gone, and I only had the ability to view the world through an antithetic lens of optimism or pessimism.

If I thought optimistically about the world, I’d only find pessimism. If I thought pessimistically about the world, it’d eventually lead back to finding some area to be optimistic about.

When I’d think something along the lines of, “This world has no opportunity for growth or freedom, it inherently lacks an adventurous spirit,” I’d get home and play games or watch shows. Doing this I’d soon think something along the lines of, “This world has people who can create such liberating forms of media and expression, maybe the world isn’t lacking of adventure just yet… there has to be some inspiration that brought these things into existence.” I’d think this until my mind reset and the loop continued once more.

It was this divide between optimism and pessimism that stuck out to me as wholly disappointing. If there was a world…

If there was a world that could meld the two of those contrasting world views together—optimism and pessimism. Hope and helplessness. Wonder and restriction…

I thought just maybe, if there was such a world, there’d be a point. A point to keep holding out hope for reality—for realism. So, I went to search for something like that otherworldly mixture in my world. And I determined that on the turn of the new month—on May 1st—I’d have an adventure of my own.

I’d saved up enough money from helping at my grandfather’s cafe throughout high school, and I’d initially planned on using it to freeload for a few years before being chained into a low paying job and more work.

However, I’d changed that plan. On May 1st, I’d definitely have an adventure of my own! I’d create an experience that I could say I felt truly alive during! I’d see the beautiful nature of the countryside, visit national parks, find all the cool cultures of the various cities across the US! I’d also blow all my money in one go, but that didn’t really matter as much to me at the time…

It was the day of my adventure. I’d gotten all my stuff ready, my grandfather made me a special breakfast and was getting ready to see me off—despite how irrational all my actions had been, he was still supportive of me. I rushed out of the house dressed up in a cute little sundress I’d bought the previous day with a matching sunhat.

And then, I got into my car and went off towards the train station—I’d decided to go by train as it’d allow me both time to relax and time to see the country. I lived in Maryland and my first destination was up in the Maine countrysides. For some reason, I thought it’d be funny if I started my trip up in Portland, Maine and ended it in Portland, Oregon. I couldn’t say why that idea amused me. It was just my form of broken humor.

After a short drive, I’d safely arrived at the train station, and…

✦✧✦

“And… I can’t remember anything after that.” My mind was blank from that point onwards, but I knew there had to be more to what was going on. By all means, my memory shouldn’t have ended at arriving at the train station. Unless, perhaps, I’d passed out when I got there or something, but why would that have happened?

Normally in situations, like the one I found myself in, people died or something epic happened to trigger waking up in an unknown place oblivious to how you got there, but I had no such luck. It just kinda seemed like it happened.

Pondering everything over, I stared out into the horizon a while longer, but I was left with no answers, and no new questions either. Well, “What the hell is happening?” which was the question I’d been asking myself the whole time, was kind of all encompassing. Not much more to formulate from there.

“God darn it all! This is all so confusing!” Fed up with everything, I aggressively fluffed my hair again and cried out to the sky. I wasn’t entirely used to not being able to figure something out, so I guess it was getting to me a bit.

But then, as a result of me fluffing my hair, I came to a new realization. It turned out, that I’d dispositioned my hair enough for it to fall over my eyes, but…

I didn’t have long hair.

I had short, black hair with well-lined bangs that fell on my forehead, not long hair that’d result in me having to push it out of my eyes from time to time.

So, I grabbed a clump of my hair and held it in front of my face to investigate it—probably looking really odd in the process—and when I did so, I noticed something else different. Having moved it away from the blurred lens of directly on my eye, I was now able to discern the color of my hair, and it wasn’t black. It was a minty green that blended in with the tree around me, and it was more strandy than my hair had ever been. I then reached to my back, and sure enough my hair ran along it a ways, too.

It was almost like I was in a different body…

“What the hell?!” I suddenly started patting myself down all over, only to find that I’d been dressed up in some sort of brown and black, basic, fantasy-styled rogue outfit—a translucent, teal scarf being the centerpiece—and that various proportions on my body had changed.

Starting with the most apparent proportional change, as my hair wasn’t the only thing obfuscating my vision as I tried to look myself over, I was no longer flat as a whetstone—not like I was gonna complain about it, though. My body also seemed to have gotten a bit fitter than it was. While I was fit and athletic before, I definitely showed it more now—I was more toned, I guess would be the way to put it. I also discerned that I might’ve grown a bit taller, too, although I wasn’t entirely sure of it.

“Looks like I’m fine. All these changes seem easily adaptable or even beneficial. Yeah, there’s nothing that seems too incredibly off… WHAT THE DOUBLE HELL?!” I thought that I was through the thick of it, but no. As I was feeding myself lines of self-assurance, my hands made contact to a major change that I felt stupid for not coming across earlier—like that time when I was reaching back to feel my hair, for instance.

Springing from my back were two, large, white and teal, angelic looking wings, which were very clearly not a normal part of a human body.

“Wait... then I really did die?! Is this heaven? It’s a lot more bland than I expected... but it does seem to have that whole high above the clouds thing in check, at least.” I took a long exhale, coming to the conclusion that I’d lost my life somehow and maybe I’d just forgotten it. I mean, why else would I have angel wings? Still though, I’d have to admit, I was kinda surprised that I ended up in heaven. I wasn’t exactly a devout believer in God or anything.

“C’mon… this is all too disappointing! I’d expected there might have been some big ol’, “Welcome To Heaven!” party or something, not just to end up there—”

Fwoooosh!

I was continuing to recite my disbelief and dissatisfaction when the wind picked up and a large blade of it crashed into the tree I was perched on, causing it to wobble.

“Wh-Whoa!” I also wobbled a little, and tried to maintain balance on the tree. I didn’t want to fantasize about the idea of falling, and I also wasn’t quite ready to trust my angelic flying capabilities to get me over to the cliff, either.

Fwoooosh!

Another blade of wind careened into the tree, causing the tree to begin to wobble even more aggressively than before. It was probably more of a sway at that point.

“Uuuhhh…Okay... SOMEBODY GET ME OFF OF THIS THING!!!” Holding my position, I looked over at the trunk of the tree and I found that it was just barely maintaining an upright position by a narrow sliver of wood. It was strongly looking like I was about to get plummeted into the abyss of sky below me.

“I don’t know if angels can die, but I really don’t want to find out—”

Fwoooosh! CRACK!

One last blade of air finished off the tree’s trunk, and I found myself falling with the rest of the tree. Afraid of what was about to happen to me, I clung to my branch like a koala clinging to its favorite eucalyptus tree and closed my eyes, preparing to ride out my descent.