Chapter 1

The feeling of falling rushes my skin, riding every nerve in my body like a freight train on summer heated tracks. My stomach chokes me as the frozen white draws nearer. I close my eyes knowing my body will greet it any second. The good news is, the pain only lasts for a moment or two. In fact, death itself is not all that painful. No. It is what comes after that scares me. Transferring.

The moment comes in a flash of excruciating seconds. All at once I feel incapacitating pain and absolute release. Just like a seed bursting underground. Tension building up on its insides realing to get out. Just pushing and pushing and pushing until finally the seed gives in. When in an excruciating moment, complete annihilation observes the seed succumbing to its destiny.

Transferring is particularly hot this time around, no surprise considering where I just came from. Where I just died. I cringe as light swarms my body, heating every inch of me. I hold faithful that it will not burn me. At least, it never has. I try to scream, overwhelmed by the whole experience. Of all the things I have known, transferring is one of my least favorite. I lose my sense of self. All I can see is light, to an onlooker I imagine I look like an exploding star. Or so that is what I feel like. No one has ever seen anyone else transfer though, so any image you can think up that involves light, heat, and/or intense explosions is probably just as accurate as mine would be. All I know is that it hurts in a way I can't describe, an extremely weird way.. kind of like fire burning your skin without leaving a mark or violent lightening squeezing your cheeks the way your grandma used to.

I wait for the next phase, which is really just the ending of it. It happens in split seconds that tick by like hours; Drawn out by the white hot panic, the overwhelming sensation of light engulfing me entirely. Finally. I blink, as the light begins to fade. I gasp for breath, feeling like I am waking up from a nightmare. My muscles jerk free from whatever had a grip on them when it felt like I was burning alive. For a moment I just lay here, thankful I can finally breathe again, thankful the light is dying down. My vision is entirely blurred and like always I spend the first few moments in my new light completely blind. My head pounds as the edges of my mind still burn white hot and illuminated. Sweat trickles down my back as I lay here, where ever here is. I learn quickly that I am laying on top of thorns, and as I make my overly dizzy body move, I realize that I am also surrounded by them. Sharp edges threaten to dig into my limited amounts of exposed skin and for the first time ever, I am thankful that my last light required me to sport several layers of polyester and wool. My gratitude is cut short however, as heat slaps me across the face.

Based on experience, the temperature here has to be around 103*, a stark contrast to the winter wonder hell I came from that averaged -33*. My light-spotted eyes are sill no use to me as I finally work my way onto my knees. My other senses jump into overdrive, dissecting the space around me. It smells like hot wood. Like how a backyard deck smells during the hottest part of a summer day. The smell takes me back to my origin. My one light that I could actually call a life. I picture those days, filled with love and hate and grass and water. Memories flood my being as I breathe in the wood scented air as slowly and controlled as I can, trying to ease my accelerated heart rate and dizziness. If only I could open my eyes and be back there, on my deck in the heat of the day. If only I could have gotten so lucky, defied what is known, transferred home. My imagination is interrupted by the crackling sound of what seems to be an endless amount of wood surrounding me. Judging by this and the way my lips feel when I breathe in, I would guess that this place is not only very hot but very dry.

Poignant fear vibrates across nerves, probably just the aftermath of the 100 foot plumet I just took or the transfer. I sit still trying to steady myself, hopeful that a silent body will result in silencing my fears. Panicked fluries dance through my chest as images of The Lightless lurk in my mind, I open my eyes trying to push them away and can't help but think of what, or who is lurking among this wooden place. Flashes of black eyes obscured by dark corners vibrate in my mind. I try to refocus, a difficult task in even the most idyllic of situations, a word I would not use to describe my current status.

My eyes start flexing their accommodative muscles and my new light starts to take shape around me. It is nothing out of a dream but still not a waking nightmare. Somewhere in the middle maybe... what is that word again? oh ya, average. The brown blur surrounding me begins to transform into a tangled mass of branches and trees, detailed with sharp edges and all. As I look around at the immensity of wood towering around me, I feel like a bird in the middle of a very large nest. Only a small portion of the sky bleeds through the the opening near the top of the neverending forest and its majesty is just as unimpressive as the dry sticks surrounding me. An indecisive shade of white-ish gray without a speck of dimension to it looms above head. The sharp angles at which the branches stick out as I look up toward the silent sky, pull me back to reality. From the cage which they resemble, a reminder that I am trapped. A reminder that I am here in a new light with a new opportunity, a new experience. Another cycle to add to my growing list. My fear of the Lightless and other unknowns haunting the land before me, urges me to stay put. To lay back down and wither away underneath the finger like trees. My mind attempts to charge down a dangerous track, the same one that landed me here in the first place.

I hear their whispers again. The voices of those I have loved- taunting me. Bile threatens my palate as I shove my gloved hands toward my ears. The ruffling sound of the nylon material drowns the whispers out enough that I can push thoughts of the offense I have commited out of my mind, refusing to believe the stories I have heard-and the whispers lurking just beyond the nylon barrier. I take one last deep breath and force myself to look away from the grimness before me and more importantly, to close my mind's eye to that slippery slope of heartache and regret.

"Okay" I breathe the word out reassuring myself, "I'm okay." I make quick work of unzipping my large bright yellow winter coat. And am overwhelmed by the gust of hot air that greets me as I shrug the coat off. I continue to shed layers until I am wearing nothing but my jeans, boots, and tank top undershirt. I look around trying to determine which direction has the biggest clearing. I laugh as I rotate around and see that the only clearing visible is the one I am standing in. With no alternative options and the daunting task of figuring out the place before me, I bundle my snow pants, jackets, gloves, and hat into a makeshift bag made of my coat, and set off. After determining that any direction would be just as good as the last, I turn in a circle with my eyes closed and begin walking in the direction I am facing when I open them back up again. Frustration tickles the back of my neck, if only transfers came with god damned maps. The sticks make an unwelcome crunching noise as I trample through them. I remember for a moment the split second I hit the snowy ground maybe 20 minutes ago, and the crunch every bone in my body unanimously sang. I shudder and redetermine myself to focus on something, anything else. A helpless feat really. My mind wanders as I do through the trees, endlessly. I think vaguely about time and how my view of it has changed. Granted, It has changed in every place I have been to. Meaning that 10 minutes here could be 10 hours or 10,000 years somewhere else. Due to this, time has almost become meaningless to me and yet it is still something I cling to. Even now as I trudge through a shower of broken sticks and skin shredding thorns, I try to calculate how long it has been. Since I started walking, since I got to this new place and started this new light, since my origin, since my last death, how long it might be till I find something here, till this cycle ends and I am forced to transfer again, and so on. Of course calculating any of it would be impossible, and so in the end all I have to go on is my internal clock. And I am not talking about the internal clock they teach you about at 5th grade maturation. No. I am talking about that internal clock that is constantly ticking in the back of your mind. The one that nags you. Consistently reminding you that your time is limited, its counted, kept, its finite. Even after I woke up somehow alive after death in my origin, or now as I trudge through a woodpeckers heaven living and breathing in my 333 light, I feel that clock ticking. And let me tell you, it is a bitch. It will not tell me how long it has been or how long I've got left. But it is there, mowing down the seconds and enticing me to keep its natural order.

A sharp pain snaps me out of my deep thoughts, I look down and reach for my throbbing right hand all at the same time. Blood creeps out of the wound slowly at first, but increases to steady flow within seconds. Judging by the blandness of this landscape, my bright red blood may well be the first color to ever caress its mundane surface. I see the assailant almost immediately and cannot believe my complacency. A particularly long branch jutting out at an odd angle and equipped with pointy looking barbs on the end, seems to be calling me on. My blood drips from its pointed tips and I can't help but imagine a little man with a pointed nose, hopping around on his feet with his fists raised ready to start a fight. "Shit. not cool bro." The words just sort of rolled out of my mouth, it isn't until I have cleared the branch and found a somewhat open spot to sit down, that I realized I spoke to a stick.

Maybe I am just lonely, I think. It has been a while since I got here, and I have yet to see another soul. I take a deep breath and strain my ears, surely I will hear something. Someone. A small fear tugs at my heart. "No. no. no." I say the words aloud. "There are rules. I can't be here alone. Remember, 332 lights, surrounded by people every time. I can't be alone." It's true I think, my past lights have proven this to me, I've never woken up after a transfer and not found somebody. I've never been alone in any of the places I have been. As I sit down and decide to focus on my bleeding hand, a small thought caresses my mind and stabs fear through my heart "332 lights have also proven that rules can be broken. That most of the time there are no rules at all." I force a laugh and let the thought drift away with the hot breeze.

I work my makeshift coat-backpack off of my shoulders using just my left uninjured hand. I undo the zipper of one of the inner pockets with my teeth and feel around inside it with my good hand, looking for the small sewing kit that I always kept handy in my last light. The cold there was so severe that even the smallest accidental hole in your coat could mean death. So everyone carried around these little sewing kits, complete with 3 needles and 4 mini spools of thread. I remember how shocked Yomi was when I told her I had never sewn before and her voice when she said "331 light cycles and still no sewing? Come child, let me show you how to save your life." Yomi was the sweetest woman whose origin was based in North Korea. She was one of the naturally oldest people I have ever met and the closest thing I have had to a friend since my own origin. She had only had 6 cycles under her belt when I met her, all of which she had lived to the absolute fullest. She was the first person who insisted I call them lives and not lights. She would get angry at me and say things about how a chance to redo life even once, was a blessing. "300 times child? That is a miracle." I never could bring myself to do it. But Yomi could, she thrived wherever she was. Even in that awful frozen place. I wonder briefly if she has ever been haunted by lightless versions of her loved ones just like me. But even thinking briefly of the possibilities turns the whispers in my mind up. So instead, I justify that Yomi could never experience such an awful thing. She is too strong, I think.

She had been in the winter wonderland for what she estimated to be equivalent to about 57 origin years when my light transferred there. Who knows where she is now. My heart breaks a little as I picture her face and what it did or is going to look like when I don't or maybe didn't come back for dinner tonight or many nights ago (you see what I mean about time being pointless). Maybe right now she is finding out, or perhaps she has gone on to transfer to dozens of more lights. I wonder if I am a memory that haunts her or a sweet spot in an icy landscape, either way she will have known. Either way, it will have crushed her. I can picture her words, "Oh child… sweet child.. What have you done?"

My mind lingers there for a moment. I physically have to shake my head to come back to the present. I work on opening the other zippers inside my coat, using the same half-teeth-half-uncut-hand technique I used on the first pocket. Flurries of butterflies greet my stomach. I pull the small felt pouch out of the 5th pocket I check as my fingers on my cut hand begin to tingle. I look down and try to inspect the wound. It's deep and fairly wide. "Stupid stick," I say. "What an asshole." Somehow, even as I stare down at my profusely bleeding hand, I realize I don't have water and have yet to find anywhere that could even possibly contain it.

The butterflies that made camp in my stomach the minute I woke up here, take hold and turn into panic. I am shocked by how nervous I become. Panic rattles my bones as I frantically look around. "Okay," my voice sounds more confident in my mind than I feel. I try to regroup. My hand is bleeding, why do I care about water right now? It doesn't help. The voice in my head repeats the thought over and over with anxiety growing more and more every time. "I need to find water." I grab one of my gloves and fold it in half pressing it firmly against the cut. I slide the other onto my hand to secure it. "Okay.." With the voice getting stronger I become more shaky and suddenly begin to notice just how dry my mouth is. "Okay I need to find water." My heart is racing now. Unbearable anxiety creeps up my stomach and settles in my chest. I say it aloud now for reasons I can't explain. "Okay… I-I-I N-Need to find s-s-s-some water-rr-." My whole body is tingling with anxiety now. My lips are numb and my hands are shaking as I force myself up onto unsteady legs. "O-o-k." I can't control myself. Anxiety has taken the driver's seat as my vision starts to blur. "I-I….." my knees buckle, "w-wa-wat-eerr" I feel my body connect to the ground head first, I try to scream out in pain but thick black anxiety consumes me entirely.