I stood under a lone tree on a cliff’s edge, serene emptiness behind me and vast ocean before me. The sky stretched out forever and I was calm, happy.

I bathed in light, self-sustaining, in love with the source of Me within.

Looking down, I remembered that lost friend, who lived somewhere below in the deep blue. When I last saw her, she had forgotten herself, cheated by circumstance. The memories of her home, on the peaceful plains above, were lost in the dark and dangerous seas.

A faint and powerless cry came to me. An old but familiar feeling retuned, small, but where it shouldn’t be. I couldn’t remember what that feeling was called, only that it had to be resolved. It was like a string tied to my little toe, that extended into the myriad worlds, and had suddenly run out of length.

I closed my eyes, and even as I revelled in the freshness of the air, the pleasantness of the fields around me and the vastness of the sky above me with its bright stars, peircing even the daylight, I dove.

I turned my attention to the call. And even as I did, a dark cloud enveloped me, encased me.

The water passed around me like air arround an arrow. I hit the sea floor at full speed.

The dark cloud coalesced on my form like armour. I wore it for what seemed like years, living in a new world with beings who wore this armour seemingly without knowing. At first, looking up, I no longer saw the vastness. So I spoke to people there of my home, which was more beautiful, where the sky was limitless. But as the years passed, the limits of the new world, and the heavy armour, became my new existence. I was me again – yet different. My cage became my world, my armour my skin.

The sea floor barely slowed my descent, and it hid a yet deeper ocean, thick with particles that darkned the light from above. But down I dove.

After many, many years, I had all but forgotten my home where the sky was vast and I was a being free from cover. I heared a familiar call, and remembered why I had ventured forth from my home in the first place. It called me to a valley, and behind a stone, into a cavern, where I saw another cloud of dust encase me.

Through the murky waters I passed and passed through a new floor, into a deeper, muddy sea. I no longer dove, but sank slow, like heavy stone. Slowly I fell, curled into a ball. Surely, there could be no deeper waters than this?

Again I passed into another world, wearing heavier clothes than I had before. The sky here seemed yet closer. As before, the people here knew nothing of the places through which I had come, and I told them many stories which they were interested to hear. But their lives were good enough, except for a few who decided to journey within. I lived there some time, and become part of that world as I had before. And again but louder I heard that calling, and was envoped by a darkness, and a sorrow.

I lay in the mud, on sea’s stone floor. But slowly I sank, even into stone.

In the world I found myself, the people went to and fro in distress, seeking many things to cure their lacking, oblivious to the cure of all woes within themselves. When I spoke to them about it, they admired me, but couldn’t hear the words I said. In this world the sun rose and set. As I looked on the great sun, and lamented my existence in such a world of lightness and dkarness, and fleeting happiness but lasting pain, I heard a cry from a stream. Looking in the waters, I saw a teared face and an outstretched arm. I didn’t know who this was, but I reached into the water. As if by the will of forces unseen, my reach became a lunge, and into the water I went.

I awoke in water and in darkness, and there I slept, dreaming of my true home. I knew where I was, and what I had to do, and the challenges that awaited me. I knew there was one person I had to find. I knew everything.

But one day, I entered a world made of stone, and everything I knew first became a vague dream, and as I grew and learned, forgotten.