Space stretched endlessly around me, a canvas of black scattered with glittering stars. No sound. No pull. Just floating... suspended in silence. It reminded me of those times when I could lie in a pool of water and just float there.
My eyes drifted across the view: the Earth, a little blue marble, with patches of white clouds floating above the surface. Just a flick, and I could erase it from existence.
My gaze shifted to the moon, pale and scarred, its face turned toward its partner as always. Farther out, Jupiter swirled like a storm given form, its great red eye glaring as if daring anyone to challenge it. Saturn gleamed past it, rings cat ching the sunlight, shining like a crown on the edge of the dark.
And then the sun. How massive, I thought as I drifted to its surface.
Up close, it wasn't just bright. It was alive. A vast, furious storm of fire, plasma curling like waves crashing against a shore. Flares whipped into the void, bigger than planets, arcs of raw destruction and creation all in one. Before, if I were this close, I would've blinked and turned to ashes. Now, I could take a step in and wander inside as if I were swimming through humid air.
I hovered just outside the surface, watching waves of fire churn like an endless ocean, every ripple strong enough to erase worlds. The light pressed against my vision, but my eyes didn't sting. My skin didn't burn. The old me would've turned to ash before a blink could ever begin.
But now…
I drifted forward, and the star swallowed me whole. Unbearable heat now relaxing warmth, soul-crushing pressures, now non-noticable. Walking through plasma curled around my body, tendrils of fire brushed against my skin before breaking apart into sparks that vanished against my skin. I moved deeper, and soon the weight of it all became soothing.
It was beautiful. For the me that was beyond strength, that is what it was. A normal person would find it fear-inducing. But that's no longer me, is it?
I stretched my arms out, letting streams of golden fire whip past me, curl around me, drag at my form like the tug of a current. It wasn't suffocating. It wasn't crushing. If anything, it was… comforting. For the first time since regaining myself, I wasn't thinking about what I'd done, or what part of me still lingered. I want to say all. But I might've been influenced in ways I don't realise.
But still, in here, in this nuclear fusion facility known as the sun, in this impossible sea of flame, I was just… existing.
And for right now, that was enough. "What should I do? What can I do?"
A/N Quite short, but the next one I plan for it to be a bit larger. This is just a bridge. and for me to ask.
Ask me, or offer ideas, I might be willing to add them. So tell me, what shall 21 experience in this journey?