I opened my nonexistent eyes.

What I saw in front of me was some sort of apparition. A silent flash of gold, like a muted explosion of a golden atom bomb on TV, and then darkness again. It was quiet, and the atmosphere was expectant and warm. Slowly, in almost unnoticeable movements, thin nearly invisible lines began shaping the air in front of me. They crawled about, gently pushing into shape purposefully. The lines wavered and formed a simple primitive blob. The blob hovered for a few seconds and began reforming like clay. Forms flashed in front of my nonexistent eyes; a fish, a flower, a mountain, a goat. Then, in a move of finality, it stretched and gave away to a simple human form. That way it stayed for the next minute.

I was a child. I stared in wonder. Something important was soon to occur. The form had no face and no flesh; it was just empty air.

It cocked its head and gave a nod of greeting.

I opened my nonexistent mouth and closed it again. Not sure what to say, I gave an awkward nod back.

“Don’t wake yourself up.”

It had a rich voice that sounded like everything in the world and nothing at all like anything I had heard before. It had the tension of a violin, the rumble of an earthquake, the sweet squawk of a bird, the roar of the ocean, the whisper of a child, the cry of a wolf, the comforting strum of a guitar, and everything in between. If the world could have a voice, if life could speak, this would be it.

I virtually looked down at myself.

It was night. I was having some kind of dream, it was unfolding in a box by my side, something about milk flooding the cafeteria and riding a horse through the school gates. I giggled as I peaked inside the box and tossed in a cradle that happened to be rocking by next to me. As long as the dream continued, as long as I stayed asleep, I was safe. The nighttime jitters, the shadows that come alive in the dark, the scary goth girl from the horror movie I saw three days ago, they would all come to life if I woke, and I would huddle in the corner until I gathered nerve enough to shout for my mother. Those were the only things that scared me, the only things my naive little self had the imagination and exposure to be scared of.

The form was watching me.

“You know who I am?”

I nodded. “I talk to you sometimes.”

“You know who you are?”

I pointed to the sleeping self. “I’m her.”
The girl twisted in her sleep and gave a sigh.

The form, if it had eyes, would have been looking at the girl. “No. She’s real, you aren’t. In the physical sense. She has a living body, she is an object to posses, something that changes with time, ages with time, and eventually dies away. Acts on impulse, on what her vital systems and chemicals in her tell her to do. You are an essence. Her essence. You posses her. You are what changes her. You are what must change. You are the manifestation of her thoughts and ideas and love and feelings and her self in a realm that never dies simply because it never really existed in a form that allows it to die, a form we do not recognize as real, because we cannot see it, yet which is the most real thing in this universe and the ones parallel to it. You are real. You are not her, she is you.”

A lot to take in. I nodded dumbly. “You…are real too then?”

The form didn’t say anything.

“How did you come here?”

“Same way everything else did, through the door.”

I looked about for a door, bewildered. Sure enough, it was there, suspended nonchalantly somewhere to the left.

“That wasn’t there before.”

“Well, since you don’t get in or out of here, it didn’t bother to show itself. It gets tired of hovering in mid-air.”

“It’s a door.”

“Yes, we established that.”

I blinked blankly and decided to keep that aside for pondering in the future. “And you felt the need to come in?”

“Yes.”

I waved my hands about, indicating everything and nothing that hung around me. “Well, there’s not much to see. It’s just me in here. I run this place.”

The form looked around. Everything that could imagine seemed to manifest itself in the atmosphere. Sounds could be heard, the sound of the school bell, stored away for future reference. Smells could be smelt, redolent of so many things, like freshly braked brownies, or the smell of air conditioner. Emotions could be felt. There were flashes of memory that lit the sky, memorized formulae scribbled on the wall, if there was a wall, a ceiling, but there wasn’t. One could not tell if there was a wall, if there was any solid even past the horizons of black and blue and red and colors that didn’t have a name, to limit or stop the infiltration of things, physical, as well as imaginary that floated harmoniously through empty space. “Well, that’s by far the most interesting thing one could hope to find; you. If people could access that door, why, you and all the others like you would be visited every other day.”

“And people would want to speak to us?”

“They already do. You speak through her, and people listen to her.”

The form pointed at no particular direction. A scribbled drawing of a rabbit parted neatly to reveal a girl, a physically real girl, sleeping soundly in a bed. It was as if blinds to a window into the physical world had been opened.

I looked at the girl. “I don’t get to see her often. I usually live behind her eyes. That’s all I usually see.”

“Sleep is when the mind comes to life.”

I looked curiously at the form. “So…why are you here?”

“To talk, child. How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“You will be fourteen tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“You are getting older now. So much will happen.”

I didn’t say anything. How was I to know what is to happen?

“I know as much about what is to happen as you do. I create worlds and maintain vital functions but I let them run on their own. I do not decide what is to happen to you. In fact, only you do. Time is not something to be messed with.”

The form paused. And then it would have smiled, if it could have lips, but instead seemed to glow a little brighter, and continued.

“It’s time to grow up, child.”

I looked down at my nonexistent (or did they exist?) hands. They seemed a little bigger, a little thinner, a little stronger. I felt the change.

“You have to help her grow up. The child sleeping in her bed right now. You must help her see past her childish perceptions. You must grow with her.”

I was slightly frightened, as my knees, drawn to my chin, seemed a little taller now. I looked up and spoke flatly, “What if I mess up.”

It was more of a statement, a demand for reassurance, a small plea for help. The form sat down cross-legged, a gesture that was so simple and human that I suddenly felt a lot more at ease. It spoke again.

“Listen, I can’t promise you that you won’t ‘mess up’. In fact, the one thing I can promise you is that you will most certainly take a wrong turn, and the consequences could very easily hit you hard. You could take multiple wrong turns. You will misjudge. You will stumble and fall and hurt and you will feel that you will never get better. But eventually, all wounds heal. They leave scars, but those scars become a part of you and eventually you forget they’re even there. You will cry and wish things were different. But I forbid you to regret. Regret keeps us trapped to our woes. It keeps us from healing. You will not regret.”

“What if I mess up so bad that I can’t make anything right again?”

“One of the most constant occurrences in this life is change. You cannot alter the past, or erase memories, but you can change. It can never be too late to change. A lot of life goes into developing a you that you can be proud of, a you that you are happy with. An identity. Remember, your identity remains. And identity is something you mustn’t lose.”

“An identity?”

“Your individuality. Your thoughts and your expressions and you alone. The things you see around you right now at this moment. Your identity must define you, must never borrow it from another, or let it live symbiotically. It must be itself, with all its flaws and triumphs, as something you crafted and perfected and posses entirely for yourself.”

We were quiet for a while. I watched a golden spec float about near my right eye. So many things I had never thought of or considered before were being presented to me. I wished to stay a child, safe. Never make mistakes so irreversible, or decisions so life-changing.

It studied me carefully. “You must grow at some point. You can’t stay at one place forever. There is beauty in growing just as there is in childhood. The hurt may seem grander, but so is the happiness.”

I took my eyes of the spec. “What if I hurt people?”

“You will hurt people, and that will hurt you the most. You might lose people, and you will take a long time to move on. If you love them enough, you will try to get them back. If they love you enough, they will try to come back. But you must give it time.”

People I loved flashed like snapshots behind the form’s head and my throat tightened. “I don’t want to lose people.”

“Nobody wants to.”

“They promised me they would never leave me. I won’t lose them. They promised.”

Echoes of words and commitments spoken rang out on cue. The air around the figure sighed as it shifted forward a bit. “Child, we make these promises but often we overlook our own emotions. A promise never to leave, is not a very easy promise to keep, and it is not a promise that is usually held. They are as much child as you, you forget. You mustn’t hold it against them. And you mustn’t depend on a promise as impossible to keep as that, for it isn’t human. You cannot depend on what others give you; that is the most unstable way to gain happiness.”

I felt sad. “How do I find happiness?”

“Child, I could tell you that you will find happiness by being selfless, by fueling the happiness of others, but I would be lying. You will find happiness in you own terms, in your own way, in doing the things you love, in having a life you wish for. And that may not come to you for years, and you will have to fight for it. I am warning you of what you might encounter.”

I was so scared. My arms felt longer, and I wrapped them tighter around my legs. “If I pray to you, will you make things better?”

The form shook its head. “I cannot determine courses or change things. You won’t get a guarantee if you pray to me. I can only give you strength. I cannot determine your life. You must develop patience to wait for the future. Be patient.”

I felt desperate. I put out my hand and reached to the nothingness I was sitting on and instantly an invisible floor created itself where before there was empty space.

The form saw this. “The best support you can give yourself is yourself. You saw that right now.”

“When does the good part start?” I asked defiantly.

“When you achieve your dreams. When you fulfill your desires. When you watch the wreck around you rebuild itself and realize that the cracks in the grounds are joining together again. When you live those moments of indifference to what will happen, when you share those minutes of triumph, when you knowingly feel the happiness and not simply live it as a rule like you did as a child. Those are moments, I think, you refer to as ‘the good part’. It starts nowhere, but is a continuous process. There will be such moments. There will be a lot of them. Don’t worry. I speak less of them because they are your right to experience. I don’t need to tell you how to handle happiness, or warn you about it.”

A child’s laughter rang out and reverberated. I absently watched a clip of my eleventh birthday play to my far right. In a few minutes, it ended.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“I tell everybody all this.”

“I can’t just grow up in one night.”

“And you won’t. You are her heart and soul, but not her logic and immediate thought and impulse. You live subconsciously, my child. The things that are born in here, they appear as temporary, in the head. They are dreams. These floating representations around you, you must experience them for them to enter through that door. But you didn’t experience me, did you? I came on my own accord. My imprint will not be retained here. Once I leave, I will be a forgotten dream. As you experience all that I just told you, somewhere my words and thought, will merge with you, all that I told you, will be rekindled as a dream, and it will help you on your way. But you will have to experience for it to be in here, permanently.”

There was a pause.

“When I asked you whether you knew who I was, you were so sure. Yet if I asked you to name me, you wouldn’t get it right.”

“I…perhaps not.”

“I am what you see me to be.”

“If I stopped believing in you, would you disappear?”

“I would reappear as something you do believe in.”

The form was starting to waver. It stood in one fluid motion and hovered flickeringly in front of me. I got to my feet, feeling taller. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, feeling the new control over balance, yet the instability of it all. We stood facing each other.

“Will you be coming again?”

The form was almost gone now. The lines started slithering away and disappearing like worms digging into black soil. “I can’t say.”

I looked at myself sleeping. Tomorrow I would get up and not remember this. Maybe I would for a fleeting second, but it would slip past by the time I was fully awake, and then other things would preoccupy me. Immediate things. I felt the rush of expectancy, of a life beginning to be lived. I felt compelled to take on a bigger role. I looked back at the form, where only the ghost of a disturbance remained.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” it echoed. And then it was gone.