The Universe

She stands on the edge of a rooftop, toes curled over the edge. The night wind is soft on her skin, the fabric of her skirt fluttering gently off her legs. Everything is spread out beneath her, glittering lights she could hold in the palm of her hand if she reached out, cars bunched together at stoplights, crowds of people moving in streams. Up here she thought she would feel further apart from all the life laid out below, but instead she feels more a part of it than ever. A fish in a school, connected and grounded by the lives everywhere around her, yet only a small speck in an ocean unfathomably vast. She takes a step forward, watching her bare foot alone and exposed over the city, balancing her weight precariously on a single leg. She’s never been good at physical balance, body wavering in small eddies of self-correction, but even that feels good. Here, at the end of the world, there’s no more uncertainty.

It's with a small hop that she steps over the edge, letting the air take her in its grasp. She loses everything but the wind, its sound in her ears, its pressure on her chest, its harsh touch on her skin, everything else a blur. She’s never felt freer, more fully herself, and yet as she falls, she realises she’s becoming less herself, memories – moments she thought defined her – disappearing into the wind. And then, near to the ground, she feels herself dissolve, becoming small spheres of light, energy into the universe.

The spheres of energy feels like cells under a microscope, glass lenses passing overhead every so often, blurring their awareness in some unseen hand’s attempt to see clearer, but mostly it’s just them. Them against an expanse of black. They both are and aren’t the spheres opposite them, but they’re no longer the thing they were either. They don’t feel upset at the absence of memories, at the awareness that they were something they can no longer remember, much less comprehend. Instead there’s only… tranquility.

“Am I serving my purpose?” they ask.

“You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be,” the spheres they both are and are not answer.

The new spheres relax further at the confirmation.

“What happens next?” they ask.

“The universe.”

The grass is long and sweet, rustling in waves beneath the breeze. The sun shines down, warming the earth, the sky a shade of welcoming orange, and beneath a tree stands a bull. His tail swishes, dislodging the lone fly that trailed him to this far corner of his field, head pointed towards the horizon and the lowering sun. His black coat gleams, even if only to his own eyes, legs strong and sturdy beneath him. He likes the way they feel, capable, his own, and he revels in the ease with which he can bend his head to the ground and find lush grasses to chew. When he was born there was light, all around him, forming him and delivering him to the world.

A girl stands at the top of a bridge, looking down to where the sunrise melts into the water below. Cars are parked behind her, red and blue lights flashing.

“Am I going to hell?” she asks the lights, looking down at where her body disappeared. She shivers, though she no longer feels the cold. Saltwater drips from the ends of her hair, makes her clothes too heavy to stand beneath.

“No,” the lights answer, and she feels their softness as they wrap around her. There’s no judgment, no cruelty in them, only an offer of rest, and she feels the relief leaking down her cheeks. Her tears become light as they fall, and she lets herself dissolve into them, and becomes something new.