It had all just become too much.

Between the work load of your classes, your job, friend and family drama, you needed to get away. You were tired. Tired of having no control over your own life. It was all being dictated by others and you had no say in it.

These were your thoughts as you climbed Mt. Ebott. Even if it was just for an hour, you hoped that this hike would clear your mind. You were never exactly the hiking type, but then again, you never considered yourself the type of person who would be in your twenties, broke and alone. Yet, there you were, with a backpack that contained your water bottle, snack bar, wallet, and phone (though you decided to keep it off so you couldn't hear the inevitable work emails building up in your mailbox), climbing a mountain to leave your problems behind.

You knew fairly well where you were heading. The hiking path was pretty straight forward. Boring, actually. It was barely a "hike" but more of a circle path around the mountain. So when you got to a point in the hike where you saw a slight opening in the trees to climb upwards, it seemed like a good idea. You had that voice of reason screaming not to stray from the pre-determined man-made path. But you were so sick of following the rules, so you started to climb.

Mt. Ebott wasn't that high. It was a pleasant hike, and you actually started to feel a bit better. The satisfying crunch of the leaves underneath your feet and the cool autumn breeze in your face seemed to brush away your problems, at least just for a moment. But of course that didn't last long. You never could get rid of the alarm in your mind blaring that you had stuff to do, people to see, money to get, and things tha-

Your train of thought was interrupted when your foot was caught underneath a tree root, causing you to fall forward and to your horror, into a hole.

The fall was fast, but it felt like forever. The further you went, the more you realized that this was it. This was the end. You knew that no human could survive a fall from where you were to how far down you were falling. But when you felt your body make contact with the bottom, it wasn't how you expected. Instead of the crushing crunch of bone meeting rock bottom, you seemed to gently land of a bed of golden flowers. This went against all physics that made sense in your mind. You immediately started assessing the damage, but there was none. This would have been enough to make you think this wasn't reality and you had actually hit your head on the way down, but then you saw it. A flower with a face, seemingly beckoning you forward. Now you knew that this couldn't be reality.