Daniel – USA

One day while walking, a gust of winter wind chilled my human bones. Pulling my coat up around my shoulders, I shuddered. Instantly, my fleshy body disintegrated and scattered to the wind. Ten thousand crisped leaves appeared in its place. My breath now frozen into sparkling mist, it was also taken up by the invisible currents of air. I was all dry leaves and molecular debris, swirling and rolling along the frosty ground, up trunks of great trees and past dry grass nests of twig and string.

Birds welcomed me with spinning song as I drifted out over wild fields. I floated amidst treetops, over rocky cliffs, down cold rapids into streams and rushing rivers below. The elements that once gave form to my body spread out in all directions. Then the deep snow came. Biting ice and thaw and spring. Seasons became small moments. For decades I moved about with no intent. Particulate matter taken by whatever moved me. Creatures looking for food carried me in their fur.  I traveled by talon. I traveled by night. I washed down into small crevices decomposing into dirt. I broke down wherever I was. Hundreds of years passed as I found my way deeper into the earth wet with worms. It was here I learned about real pressure. Real pressure indeed. Tons of earth pressed on me from all sides. The slow heaviness forced a certain silence on me. With this came the awareness that I was everywhere. Physical motion became a dream, a familiar memory. Yet instantaneous travel was very real. It was here where I learned to flash in and out of existence, to move without motion, to see with no eyes. The darkness was my vehicle into the void, the outer realms and inner realms alike.

But nothing lasts.

I was exploring a distant star when I felt it and knew to return. I was melting. What a feeling! What power! Glowing with billions of other small suns, I scorched my way through miles of metal and mineraloids, moving massive mountains, giving birth to myself. Vibration. Chaos. Expanding, I burned the surrounding lithosphere to black glass. I breathed steam and spit lava into the ashen sky. With hands of hot rock, I crawled out of the earth and oozed life onto the planet through perfect petrification. I seared my way into the surrounding valleys, and eventually slowed.

Following the violence, I found a calm state of restful recovery and warm recrystallization. Wind cooled my surface. Life grew out of my cracks.

Here I am.