Chapter Three

Soft skin touches mine. Gabriel turns my head to his, and I’m lost, utterly lost, in his eyes. Sunshine in marbles, with the eclipsing moon dead centre as a pupil, constellations of stars circling the core of the universe. The entire cosmos contained right there in front of me. Expanses of life reach out before me. My mind is awash with countless possibilities, all the wonders that lie in these eyes, these infants of infinity. Planets dance and novae flare; gods create and destroy as meteors guide lost souls through the complex labyrinth of space.

A radiant comet pulls at me and beseeches me to follow it, and so I do, merging with the hurtling streak of light, and together we dash through the skies. In the light-filled expanse, I see beings I could have never known existed. Some sit in calm, watching as time unfurls before them. Some use gigantic shards of frozen dust and gas as golf clubs, knocking planets to the other end of reality. Others dance on the surface of suns. In the distance, beings allow themselves to be slowly drawn into a black hole. My comet and I meander through all this.

In the distance, a pinprick of light calls to me. The comet veers towards it and lets me know that the pinprick is the Sun. I’ve never seen it this small. A fairy light on some great cosmic Christmas tree. My mind is pulled towards a memory, which plays itself out on the surface of the comet. I’m lounging on grassy ease in a park near my student house in university. It’s the advent of spring and I’m deep in the throes of this week’s hangover. My mother has just called me to say that Dad passed away last night and I need to come home. I’m only three months away from finishing my course, but that suddenly seems impossible. The sun burns me so brightly, snuffing out my peace, roasting my comfort like chestnuts, only for them to be eaten by the birds whose songs drill away at my head. How strange to think that such intensity could now seem so insignificant, so distant.

But then the intensity roars up inside me. Memories of my dad pour into me, filling up my body until I’m drowning. Stardust circles me, each speck carrying a day at the beach or an argument in the kitchen or a cup of tea one of us made for the other. The sunshine that had seemed so far away beams through the stardust, sending fractals of grief-tinged colour around me. There’s the day I passed my driving test; the day he dropped me off at university halls; the day he buried me up to my neck in sand; the day I grazed my hand in the park, and he kissed it better.

Suddenly I’m choking. Gasping for air is futile as the sun gets brighter, blinding me and suffocating me.

As we pass the sun, I see Earth up ahead, framed by planets no human has ever set foot on. We’re hurtling towards home, but I still can’t catch my breath. My throat is full of sorrow as we shoot past the moon. Fire erupts around me, burning my clothes away as I fall, clasping at my neck as I separate from my comet. It disintegrates as endless blue races towards me.

The sharp chill swallows me whole as I plummet deep into the water. Everything is dark, and I float, weightless, quiet. Floods of water purge the stardust from my throat, and I breathe easily again, despite being below the water’s surface. Deep serenity falls over me, and I feel myself drifting into a vacuum.

A voice: “Sorry about this.”

The voice feels familiar, but I can’t place it. All I know is I’m happy to hear it, even if the words unsettle me.

A riptide tosses me about, yanking me from tranquillity. I’m ripped from this womb as current after current tugs me this way and that. Giant creatures of the sea pass me, huge fins moving in slow undulations. Long tentacles list lazily around me, and I crunch into a ball. Sea creatures freak me out.

“Almost over.”

The voice is coming from a small fish, no bigger than my palm. Triangular in shape, it’s a faint yellow colour with three vertical black stripes.

“Why are you apologising?”

My own voice sounds subdued as the sound waves of my voice battle through the pressure of the ocean.

“This probably isn’t what you expected.”

The fish circles me gently.

“Expectations just set us up for disappointment,” I murmur.

“We need disappointment to know joy.”

“What if we don’t deserve joy?”

My voice falls flat.

“Everyone deserves joy. You seem nice. Why don’t you deserve joy?”

No answer comes. Around me, monstrous creatures peer into my soul with wide, unblinking eyes.

The small fish brushes a fin against my cheek. “Are you ready?”

Before I have time to ask what it is I should be ready for, the ground opens up beneath me, light cascading in as water gushes out. I’m carried away, rushing with the current. All other life has fled. It’s just me and the water racing towards this ever-growing hole in the ground, the light growing brighter. I feel like I’m about to fall through a plug hole. Amid the undercurrent of panic I can feel gently rising in me, another memory calls out, then plays itself like a movie on the flowing water around me.

I see myself on holiday in Türkiye. Rhys and I have gone together. Our first couple’s holiday. We’re at a waterpark, and I’m standing atop a slide that acts like a giant drain. He’s gone ahead, circling the bowl before disappearing into the pool below. A lifeguard gives me a nod and I follow, going around and around, my back getting cut by the gaps in the hard plastic. Seconds later, I drop into the same pool, but Rhys is gone. Later that month, he broke up with me.

And now I’m circling the drain once again, faster, and tighter, until I drop and land with a thud.

“Is that better?”

My eyes open slowly, blinking back the brightness of the sun. Warmth from the sand beneath me seeps into my skin. Muscles throughout my body loosen. Turning, I try to locate the sound of the voice, but I can’t. All I can see is the sea lapping against the sand in front of me and luscious green trees behind me. Around me, life is thriving. Standing, I shake sand out of my hair, reaching up to discover it’s dry as a bone. Gentle wind strokes my naked body.

Fresh air floods into my lungs and slows my breaths. Everything seems so much more peaceful, but things still shift around me. Nothing stays still. The waves crawl towards me and then recede, the trees melt into each other, the sun expands and contracts as if it is breathing with me. The very beach is alive. My heart drums to the beat of the universe. It suddenly seems so obvious that I’ve been a part of everything this whole time.

I walk forward effortlessly, meandering towards the trees to see what lies beyond, away from the sea that birthed me. Every step falls in harmony with the song of birds around me, the gentle grazing of mammals. Colours of endless beauty pass me by in the form of the most exquisite animals. My eyes can barely take everything in. Soft foliage cushions my feet as I move towards a clearing up ahead.

“You seem a little better.”

It’s that voice again. It doesn’t take long to place it. A rust-coloured bird with bright plumage streaming from bright orange to apricot. It looks like a flower whose name I can’t place and that doesn’t seem important. The bird is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. As I extend my hand, he flies up to me and perches in my palm.

“Hello.”

My voice is soft.

“Are you okay?”

the bird asks.

“Why do you keep changing?”

“Don’t we all change?”

And it’s that question that sends discord into the rhythm that had seen me melt into the universe.

“I’m tired of change,”

I say, sitting on a downed tree-trunk. “There’s been so much change. I just want things to stay the same for a while.”

The bird leaves my hand and joins me on the log.

“I can understand that. But that’s just not how things work. The only constant is change.”

In my mind, I find myself sitting on a bench in a park with my mum, a few weeks after Dad passed away. We’re having this same conversation. A few months later, I’m having the conversation with my friend Elizabeth after everyone graduated from university except me. A couple years after that, I have the conversation with a stranger in a gay bar after I tell him about Rhys leaving me.

“I’m sick of change,”

I say, kicking a small stone.

“But it’s in the change that we find meaning. It’s in change that we find life.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just listen to your breath. It never stays still. It has to change. You can’t just breathe in forever. You’d lose your breath, and that would be the end of you.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Your inhale has to change to an exhale for you to live. And then it has to change back. You can’t just exhale forever, desperately trying to let go so you can live. You just let things be the way they are, ever-changing.”

My brow furrows. “I’m not sure I follow.”

The bird lays an egg in front of me. “Think of someone you love.”

My mum springs to my mind.

“Think of that person as they are now. Would you wish they’d always been that way?”

“I—Uh, no?”

“No. Because if they’d always been this way, they’d be stuck. They’d never have enjoyed life. They’d be trapped in an instant of time. We need to flow with time, with life. You don’t want to be so busy trying to make a life that you forget to live.”

The egg begins to crack. “Because you never know when your time might be up.”

I turn to the bird to find it lying motionless beside me. The gentle up and down of its chest has stopped. The sound of eggshell breaking calls for my attention, and I watch, eyes wide with wonder, as a small rust-coloured bird emerges, chittering away, its song of new life melodious in the oxygen-rich air. Feelings of awe overwhelm me, and I realise I’ve never seen anything being born before. Not in person. Not in real life. I raise a finger to my face to discover it damp. Then my chest is heaving, and I realise I’m crying. My cheeks hurt, and I notice I’ve been smiling for the last minute as I watched this miracle unfurl before me.

The little bird hops around and then wanders up to me.

“Do you see?”

he says. “You would never have been able to see that unless things changed. You’d never be able to feel the way you just felt without change. Everyone you’ve ever loved, every moment of happiness you’ve ever experienced, every connection to the divine or whatever you want to call it, happened because you and others were capable of, and bound to, change.”

The bird flies up and towards the clearing. “Now come on.”