She hurt.

Which, all things considered, made sense, as she had essentially just jumped off a cliff.

And since humans are not gods, and cannot walk on insubstantial things like water and cobwebs, she had plummeted to the ground.

But it was more than that, more than physical pain, more than the fact that the last part of the fall had been a dizzying whirl and that she couldn't actually remember landing on the ground. It was more - more like the world had gone mad. Or at least her vision had.

It was like putting on new glasses, when the prescription had jumped considerably. Looking through the improved lenses was wonderful: suddenly you could see all these details that you had never seen before, could see individual leaves and recognize people when previously all the colors had been a blur. It was pure relief.

Yet, like the rest of life, it was double sided. Those new glasses hurt, eyes unaccustomed to looking through them. Sometimes you just had to take them off and put on your old pair, because, well - everything was too bright, too brilliant, too crisp.

The entire world was like that.

It was as though there had been a sheet over her, dimming her sight and smell and taste and touch and hearing. Now the sheet had been whisked away. Instead of existing in the background, the entire world wanted to sit at center stage, every piece as sharp and crisp as though her attention was focused solely on that section. The trees were moving, not only with the motion of everything nesting in them, but through their own ability. They whispered to each other, gossiped with the wind that played in their branches before dancing away to flirt with the grasses. The land was weightier here, its presence stronger, more powerful, more real. It was undoubtedly the forest, but it was no woods she knew, not abiding by the rules her world had set out.

Everything was simply . . . more.

"Are you all right?"

She turned to see her guide sitting next to her on the moss-covered ground, staring intensely at her with his chocolate-brown eyes. Of all the things here, he was unchanged, still a boy, still human, as though that alone could transport among these worlds and remain the same.

Except maybe his sense had been knocked loose.

"That was a cliff," she said, unable to think of anything else, "A cliff."

He nodded, in what would have been a grave manner if not for the half hidden amusement in his eyes. "Indeed. It still is. Look." And he tilted his head back.

Mimicking him, she stared up the ravine, the straight edge of the rock rising far into the sky, the trees of above only faintly visible. It was like putting the old glasses on; everything lost of dimension of life, becoming blurrier, animation rather than real life. The sky she had seen for all of her years seemed flatter, grayer than before. She stared in shock, and then lowered her gaze to the forest around her, the living trees and plants and vines, which climbed from branch to branch. And she was scared.

"What did you do to me?"

"I gave you truth."

He was a lunatic, that was what it boiled down to. She was in the middle of an unnatural woods with a certified madman. She didn't like it. Her body tensed, and she shivered. No, she thought, wrapping her arms around herself, she didn't like it at all. "I want to go back to the bus," she announced, as though he actually cared what she wanted. She slid a look towards him, trying to judge his potential to be an ax-murder/rapist or if he was just a run-of-the-mill crazy.

"It will be all right," he said, smiling at her, catching her hand in his own. She yanked it away and jumped to her feet, quivering with suppressed terror, pushing down on the urge to run into the woods and lose herself in it.

"'All right'?" she repeated tensely. "My idea of all right isn't jumping off a cliff into some weird, freakish world. My idea of all right is watching TV and drinking coffee. Hazelnut, preferably." Her voice heightened as she spoke, and she clenched her fists, concentrating on them, as though if she let them loose, her entire body would unravel as her particles exploded outward.

He rose as well, slowly, as though he didn't want to scare her. "I am sorry that that was hard for you. I wish there was an easier way, but there rarely is. Those who do not willingly jump always need a push." He reached out a hand, but he was mistaken if he thought she would take it. "You see, you need to break out of that world, that way of thinking, and this is the only way to do it. After this, everything will be much, much easier."

"What are you talking about?" she yelled, backing away. She snatched up a stick from the ground and pointed it at him threateningly, but somehow it slipped away, sliding from her fingers and returning to its previous place. Shaking, she stared at him, terrified and bewildered.

"Come," he coaxed, carefully sitting down again, "and I will explain everything to you. I am sorry I did not before, but it is much easier to believe my words now, when you have seen that the things I will speak of do exist. Please. Please sit."

Slowly, she did.

"You live in a world where nothing is what it seems," he said, drawing a circle in the dirt between them.

She scoffed. "Please. Like I haven't heard that before. That's the vaguely prophetic opening the mystical guide uses in every story."

"Maybe it's used so often because there is truth in it."

"Or maybe people are just unoriginal and know a good line when they hear it."

Struggling to rein in his irritation, he pointed back at the circle. "That is where you are."

"In a circle of dirt? How flattering."

He looked at her sharply. "Would you please simply listen and not speak?" he reprimanded.

Clara resisted asking if there would be a question and answer session at the end of the lecture, and nodded.

"In your world, you are all looking at one thing. Here," he said, holding up a twig, then pointing at the long shadow it cast on the ground. "And you are told, when you look at that shadow, that it is a tree. Everyone believes it, because it is what they have all been taught." He looked at her blank face and restarted, wiping out the circle, tossing the twig to the side. "Look around you. Just look at everything."

She did.

She had been looking - it wasn't as though she could escape it, these trees whose branches waved in the wind that did not exist, who made the three dimensional trees she was used to look flat like cardboard. The entire world was denser in reality, even the dirt he had drawn in. It was thicker, richer, more like fancy loam then the scratchy dirt on the forest floor.

"Look where I've brought you," he said softly. "It's the real world, or at least it's starting to be. This is the path between your home and mine, and it is hard and rocky and different then anything you have ever conceived of, but in the end it will bring you into reality, into a place a hundred times more true than here, which is a hundred times more true then what you are used to."

And because of where she was, she believed him.

It would be impossible in any other place, and it was impossible to describe in any words she knew. Suffice to say, she believed him because she knew his words were true, because the world around her was proof of that, and if there was a place more real then here, and infinitely more real then where she had grown up, she would follow him there.

So she did.

Truth. Such a strange idea. Reality. Did it exist?

Could anything actually be absolute, and could a truth be real to more than one person? Is truth real, a thing, or simply a word we use to try to capture an ideal? If everyone agreed the sky was green, and everyone knew it, and everyone believed it, would it be true? If everyone believed shadows had shape, did they really?

She followed him. She followed him through the forest, fording rivers, crossing dams. Over wood and water and wheat covered fields, under branches and rock cliffs and red painted skies. She walked, for ages, it seemed. Right foot after left, over and over, setting them down on the endless ground, forcing her legs to keep on moving. Her sneakers, the worn blue and white, never became more dirty or worn, and she never was sleepy. They simply kept moving.

It was not easy. She had not expected it to be, when the first part of the journey involved jumping off a cliff. But he was a guide, and knew what he was doing. He would offer small helps, an arm stabling her as she jumped from a log across the river to shore. A rope tying them together so she would not fall off the mountains. A hand to hold for balance.

And so they traveled, side by side, Clara depleted of energy and ready to collapse, unable to see what would come next, looking no further than her next step. And he was beside her, steadying her.

Desert. Burning sands. Her lungs hurt. Her throat felt scratchy, and she hadn't had water in ages. Her eyes were stinging, and watering as well, but she didn't want to let them, didn't want to let even the smallest amount of moisture escape her. She couldn't swallow; the rasping was too painful, too dry and sore, like the inside of her was coated in sandpaper. There were no colors but red and yellow and orange. The sky was blue, but she was too tired to look up. She missed seeing green. She missed when her feet did not sink at every step, when her legs didn't ache from plunging in and out of dunes. She missed the time when sand and dust wasn't engrained in every fold of her clothes, when her teeth didn't crunch with the sand that lay in them, when her skin wasn't papery and dry. But she couldn't remember a time when it wasn't like that.

Until . . .

Mountains. At first, she was grateful to see the green everywhere. The green was beautiful, the leaves lovely. It reminded her of where she had been, so long ago, the flat place. But this was a different motion then she was used to. The ground was hard, and it was not as malleable as she was sand. Roots tripped her, knocking her constantly to the ground. The guide would pick her up and dust her off, but then they would be moving again. Soon, she did not have the ability to appreciate the birdsong or the soft breeze. The branches were whipping in her face, leaping out to bite into her. And she ached. All over. She could not breathe, and as they climbed higher and higher the air was thin and cold and seemed to go right through her, piercing her, painfully. She had to scramble on her hands and knees to follow her guide, as they climbed rocky stretches. She accumulated cuts and calluses, and a squint from always looking up. The muscles in her hands clenched. Her lungs hurt. The wind whipped the sense away from her, so strong it chilled her to the bone. And their pace was so quick, she was always, always running after him, feeling as though her body was about to give way.

Oceans. She thought the water would be better, but only for a moment. More aching. She swallowed salt as soon as they set to the ocean, and she couldn't remember the crawl, and she was forced to make up how she was supposed to swim. She grabbed his foot once, afraid she was going to sink, but he shook her off and shook his head. "This is for you to do," he said, treading steadily in the water. "I can show you the way, but that is all." And then he was off again, pulling himself forward while she sank or swam, and it was often nearer the former. Everything was blue, and everything was wet, and cold, and her body wasn't happy with her at all, and her eyes stung from the salt water. She was frozen and dead and even when the last wave deposited her on the beach, she knew she wasn't done. She lay curled there, until the guide's feet came into view, and then he was lifting her and they were moving again, him calmly, and her a disaster of proportions far grander than epic.

Marshes. Now there were bugs to add to the wet and the cold, and she had to leap over pits or muck her way through them. It felt as though she was going days pushing through thigh high sludge. He called it beautiful, and when she frowned at her, he had the nerve to laugh. It was too foggy to see through, so he took her hand and guided her, but that was not enough to avoid the creatures who swam through the swamps, swishing against Clara's legs. When she came out, she was wet, and tired, and hurt everywhere. And there was still more.

Forests. It was like the first one, only more so, which made her laugh - because wasn't everything more? Her eyes hurt from constantly adjusting to the increase of reality. This no longer surprised Clara. She entered it, happier with it then with the other landscapes. For the first time, she felt able to walk and travel, as though her body was as in as good a shape as she had always wanted it to be. She was able to walk alongside the guide, rather then five length behind, and though she panted, it was more controllable. She was almost able to appreciate the strange, wonderful vegetation and wildlife around her.

"All life is wild," he told her once, laughing. "Did you think humans were tame? Or any less a wild animal then the boar?"

"Wait. There are boars here?"

He raised an eyebrow, and they continued.

And always, no matter what terrain they traveled over, and no matter how slight, how indiscernible or remarkable the angle, they traveled up.

"Why do we always have to be climbing up?" she asked when they finally stopped, when she had finally pulled enough oxygen from the air to be able to speak. "Why can't we, just once, climb downwards?"

He, who was perched quite comfortabley on a rock facing her, tilted his head, quiet amusement on his face. "Into the bowels on the earth?" he questioned.

"Uh, no, just down the hill."

"You have already been down there," he said, apparently deciding they had rested long enough and beginning to hike again. "We are ascending out of the cave."

"Okay, but why does they spiritual ascending stuff always have to actually mean ascending? For once, couldn't we descend and have that be the same thing as ascending? Couldn't going down be like going up even though it was down? And on that subject, why can't dark be light? Because all this light, and sun we're seeing is incredibly hot, and I am burning, and it's quite likely I'll get skin cancer, and I'd be overjoyed if just once this eternal journey could be at night rather than high noon."

"Clara, you're babbling."

True, but she was tempted to continue, if only to spite him. But they were moving again, and she was exhausted, and all the fight went out of her at the sight of the rock wall they had to climb.

"I thought we left the rocks in the mountains with the cliffs," she said, looking at it sadly.

He touched her face and smiled. "Just this once, I promise."

"You know, where I come from you would have to wear a harness and have a spotter to go up something like this," she warned him.

He began to climb, ignoring her old world advice, and she followed him. She did not sigh, for she would need that breath. But it was not so bad as she remembered, and she pulled herself onto land with miminal ache. She caught up with him as he continued to walk, the land almost leveling off. They walked side by side, no matter that she did not know where they were going. The canopy of tree leaves kept her out of the direct sunlight, but her clothes were dried and warmed all the same. She felt better, healthier, and her mood improved, almost to the point of giddiness. She became hyper aware of everything around her, the ageless trees and wide flowers blooming on vines and dancing across the forest floor. The foliage sparkled not only with the sunlight dappling it, but with it's own beauty.

"We're nearing it," he said, and Clara looked over at him, surprised by the note she had heard in his voice. It was one of longing, of one breathlessly waiting for glory, and running towards it at full speed. He straightened, and changed, and a sense of expectancy came over again. She recognized the youth she had seen a long time ago when she was lost in the woods.

She dropped behind him, her eyes on his feet, on their quick rise-and-fall. He was not running, and his excitement was contained, but it was there. She felt wary, which disturbed her. Wasn't this what she had striven for, what she had journeyed a world's length to discover? Wasn't it?

They came to it.

He moved forward, but she stopped, abruptly, stilling herself before she crossed into another landscape, as she had so many times before. He had not noticed she had stopped, and kept going, but she barely noticed that.

For she was overwhelmed by reality. By the sun, life, the world she had never seen before.

And she wanted desperately to go home.