I am your novelist.

The words echoed around and through my state of mind and body. All I could do was watch. All I could do was listen. It was all I could do. It was all I could remember to do.

My characters have fallen into the vulgar mistake of dreaming. But what is vulgar if not refinement? What is a mistake if not understanding? They live in a dream, but only few can actually see such dream. I do not - cannot understand what I believe is superficial seeing, and yet I am here. Wondering and waiting.

The head moved, showing an angle of new stars that laid awake on its infinite abyss of a body. Or was I gazing upon the galaxy itself?

I will wait no longer. I am - tired. You, my character, retained a spirit of infancy even into the era of adulthood. I understand you. My eyes, my heart. We are intertwined by fate and purpose. I want - need to understand.

To learn.

To believe.

You are my vessel.

My end.

My future.

We are of the same mind, living and seeing within both heaven and hell.

Now go.

And I left.

…

Ralph Waldo Emerson would be proud to know I momentarily became a physical representation of his philosophical metaphor of a transparent eyeball.

That experience felt like an eternity had passed, albeit I remembered it with pristine clarity.

I'm pretty sure I was born right after that metaphoric lunacy.

And what I mean by pretty-sure is that I was stuck in a dark tunnel with only my mind present, but I could somehow see a glimmer of light shimmering at the end. Voices echoed through my tunnel and at first, I couldn't comprehend what was being said. Everything I heard was muffled, and when I strained to hear what was spoken, I would grow tired, and then I would fall asleep, and when I awoke again, I was in the same tunnel with everything on repeat.

I cried and cried and cried. And then I would stop when I'd felt warmth envelope me. It made me feel safe; it made me feel like I was no longer alone anymore.

And when that warmth tried to leave me I'd clutch to it with all my might, and sometimes it would stay, sometimes it would leave. Sometimes I would cry, more so than not I would stay silent.

But after waking anew after so many repeats, a word finally found its way through the opening of my tunnel, and I rejoiced when I understood it:

"...ve-da…"

It was a name, and it took more new awakenings before I was able to hear more.

"...Veda…"

"...sweet...Veda…"

"My...sweet...Veda…"

"My...precious Veda…"

"My beautiful...baby girl…"

"You are my...my only...you make me…"

Mother?

And then I blinked.

It was like looking through a frosted window. Somehow, someway, I found myself further down my tunnel, near the end, near the opening. So close and yet so far away. But now I could see. Through the opening of the tunnel, through the foggy glass-like barrier, I could just make out a figure hunched over the tunnel. Large in comparison to the opening, and the harder I looked, the clearer the image became until I was finally gazing upon a woman who smiled down through the tunnel with adoration and love that it had me in an unfamiliar state of bewilderment and awe. She was so beautiful with bright yellow hair and hazel eyes and a heart shaped face that tapered down to a small pointed chin and a dazzling smile.

I couldn't help but stare, feeling the familiar warmth that kept that darkness away enveloped my very being, bringing a sense of want and happiness as well as a feeling of belonging.

"My sweet little angel," said the woman, the same voice that I'd heard earlier. "My sweet little Veda. You're getting so big." And her voice! Her voice sang through me, bringing a fit of passion to take rise through me that I felt it explode all my senses in one fell-swoop of complete and utter joy.

That was when I heard a giggle. A laugh so pure that if I could still feel my body, I would be on my knees in pure and utter happiness.

The giggle happened all around me, ricocheting off the darkness and surrounding me in everything it stood for.

And then I remembered.

It didn't come in a flood of panic or trepidation nor did it bring a sense of overwhelming comprehension, or a cataclysm of pain. One minute I didn't know anything and the next I remembered everything.

That my name wasn't Veda, it was Lill. And that I was a twenty-five-year-old woman that taught High School Computer Science and owned a little house with a white picket fence and a dog named Skip, and every Saturday I would hang out with my friends at some random restaurant and talk the night away, and that every night I would go to the gym and work on my kickboxing with my coach/boyfriend to keep in shape, and that-

And what I was looking through wasn't a tunnel that had a fog-like glass window. I was looking through the eyes of an infant.

I - was a baby.

Did I die?