The stars dance before my eyes, multi coloured shards of light piercing the darkness.
The darkness that holds me and surrounds me, a warm embrace, comforting, quieting.
I feel but do not see save for the dancing motes of colour tracked from my optical nerve to my brain.
I hear but do not understand, the sounds muffled, heard from a great distance, indistinct.
My mind reaches for meaning, for understanding, for something but fails to find coherence.
I exist, I know that much, for if I didn’t these thought processes would not be.
I cannot tell you how long I have been here, in the darkness, for time does not yet hold meaning for me.
I just am, but I know that soon I will be more.
Pressure, unlike anything that I’ve felt before in my timeless existence, threatens to crush me.
My world, such as it is, shrinks and grips me, forces come into play on my fragile body.
The darkness intensifies with the pressure, turns blue, and engulfs me.
Noise assaults my senses, becoming sharper, less remote, and builds to a cacophony.
Black to blue to crimson to red the coruscating colours saturate and illuminate my world.
Ever brighter, ever louder, ever more constricting.
Is this the end?
The light washes over me, blinding in its brilliance.
The sound, my sound, is clear in my ears.
I gasp for breath, I choke, I gasp again, air, sweet air, fills my lungs and I let forth a cry.
And I know.
I know.
That this is not the end, but a beginning.