Wisps

No Strings Attached

You wake up in a land of roiling greenish-gray mist, the ground sparsely covered with grass. You only know two things.

You are alone.

You are free.

In this land, there is endless possibility. The mist may obscure your vision, and there might not be anything to create physical things with, but nothing obscures your mind and body from wandering and discovering. This fact slowly dawns on you as you get up on your feet and survey your surroundings.

You start walking. The ground is flat. There are no hills for several minutes after you set off.

Thrills wear off easily. Soon you tire of walking in the same straight line, and stand still, contemplating what do do. Maybe turn left, or right? You take both those options, one after another. You itch for more activity. You break into a run.

Running is glorious, running is wonderful. You can run all day and not get tired. You don't even notice the ground under you getting uneven. The sparse grass begins vanishing, as pebbles appearing in its place. After a few minutes, you stumble and fall onto the hard ground.

There is no pain. You just lie facedown on the pebbles for a few minutes, catching your breath and reliving those wonderful moments of wonder when you first got to this land. Tendrils of gray and green mist whisper around you.

After a while, you get up. Maybe that's enough running for today. You'll just stand here, taking in the mist. However, you notice that the ground below you fades away faster into the mist in one particular direction than in any other direction. A sense of purpose pours into you like fuel, and you set off for the quickly fading land.

You stop short as it becomes apparent why the land fades away. At your feet, the ground simply ends, a pale gray abyss stretching into the distance. What now? Turn around? Somehow that idea doesn't appeal to you.

Maybe the smoke down there is so thick you can walk or swim in it. You get on your knees, crawling one way and then the other, perched on the edge of the cliff. Maybe it's a step in a staircase. Maybe...

You lose your balance, then your breath. You are falling.

This is even better than running. You can control which way you're falling. It's like flying! You shoot up into the sky, above the abyss, and glide over the land you were walking on minutes before. You laugh to yourself to think that running would ever give you a thrill like the one you are having now.

After you tire of flips and midair hairpin turns, you fly straight for a while. Then you are rudely interrupted by a siren, bringing you back to reality. The mist evaporates.

No Strings Attached - Approaching Nirvana