An exquisite pain… It grips me. Controls me. Consumes me.

How long have I lain here…? What I think is the sun… It scours my retinas, my pupils protest, and I can once again feel pain devouring my mind and every living cell.

Shall I lay here? Respirating? Among the blades of grass and earth that I cannot determine whether are real or fake?

Why can't I remember anything?

Whispers of thoughts tease me, and for a moment, my eyes adjust to the excruciating light and I feel like I might be opening my mind to a memory, just the same as my eyes are opening to let physical visions flood my fragile mind.

I feel bitter.

No thought is rushing back to my head. I'm empty. A hollowed out being. Devoid of anything but the knowledge of my own uncertainty. Devoid of anything but realizing that somehow, someway, I continue to exist as… an entity.

An instinctual and deliberate process. I realize that every cell in my body continues to work, buzzing with all the activities that biology warrants.

I hate it.

I hate being aware.

I want to retreat, fall back into the darkness that was comforting and quiet. Instead, I lie here, now seeing the brutally crystal sky and blinding pearlescent clouds suspended and surreal above me.

I feel the breeze play across my skin, dance through my hair and it's cool. Springy and moist. My skin puckers, little bumps apparent on my chilled skin.

My lips are dry… I try, with a groan to will my mouth to move…

My voice dies before it even reaches my lips.

I'm becoming aware of my physicality, this is too much feeling. Sore, dry, thirsty, unpleasant sensations are bombarding me…

Now it's too hot. The sun unkindly burns. It's much, much too cold. The air bites like ice.

Longing that I can't put a name on still haunts me... The feeling I always have when I wake up from my sleep.

I can actually fathom being able to stir from my dreams. I think I've been here before…

Perhaps not "here" in the sense of place, but "here" as in recalling that I've been reborn out of death many, many times. "Here" as in I can actually be mentally aware that this is not the first time I've awoken this way and it most certainly will not be the last…

I exhale sharply and I listen to my breath hiss against my lips.

I'm disappointed.

I had hoped… that I might be able to recall…

"Tssssukasaaa"

Whispers of the wind. The wind is speaking to me.

"Tsukasa"

The earth is exhaling; I can feel the cold dew uncomfortably gathering in the crook of my back, between my shoulder blades, against my scalp, in the very fibers of my clothes.

"Tsukasa"

I hear pounding vibrations in the dirt… I feel the grass protest as it is being crushed beneath hurried feet.

"Tsukasa"

Darkness plays across my vision. Are these… shadows? Fluttering across my body, I only feel the presence of others… but I see no one. Will no one come to tell me that this is reality?

"Tsukasa, Tsukasa… We've waited for you…"

And… now… I am bombarded by a sweet pain in my heart…

My mind bursts open, painful, splitting, and so real. It's difficult, flooding sensations, flooding emotions that I want desperately to distance my mind from. I still cannot remember, but now… I can feel.

It hurts to feel.

I can feel. I am no longer safe.

I am no longer safe by only being a participant of relentless biology.

Of being a participant in cold breezes, blinding sunshine, breathing plants, and dark earth…

I now know…

"Tsukasa"

I know, with heavy certainty… that I am finally...

"Subaru…?"

… Alive.