It was a strange world she was in. A world imbued with the strangest hues and flora of the strangest design. Yet there was a strange sense of familiarity about it. The tree under which she sat and pondered about this world’s intricacies was short and stout. It had the most slender of branches, branches that could almost be passed off as leaves. Set upon these branches were scores of thick pointed leaves the weight of which caused the branches to bend towards the ground and even touch the ground at places. Like the braided hair of a woman she thought they were. The entire sky was suffused with a dull yellow color that gave the illusion of warmth but in this world the color of the sky did not affect things the way they did in her world. A perpetual fog permeated the world around her. None of the objects in this world cast any shadows. Besides the sound of her measured breathing not a single sound could she hear from anywhere in this world. There was no wind. Nothing moved unless she touched it. The framed door through which she had entered this world stood before her. She only had to proceed through it to escape this dream world and grasp reality. But it was also the door through which she had chosen to escape reality and enter a world that challenged every notion of reality she had built up over the years.
It was cold, she was alone yet she felt calm and unafraid. It was a fantastical realm yet everything had parallels with reality. She walked on through the haze the sound of her footsteps and the sound of the grass crushing under her feet magnified by the silence of everything else. The braided branch trees she saw every where. No bird nested among its branches no fruits hung of them. Where had all the birds flown away to she wondered. The sun gave life to every living thing she had been told. Yet there was no light that gave life here only the light that kept away the darkness. She walked on for a while. The grass beneath her feet grew sparser and the trees she could see became fewer. It began to brighten and the ground began to grow translucent. A few more steps and there was nothing more on the ground. It was like standing on glass floor. She was enveloped by a brilliant yellow light. That was when she realized that the light had always been coming from below the ground. That was why nothing cast shadows like she expected. After her eyes had adjusted to the brightness she began to perceive shapes and movement beneath the surface. She lay face down on the ground pressing her face as close as possible to the ground. She saw what appeared to be the same trees she had seen before moving gently this way and that their slender branches waving like tentacles of a jellyfish. One of the creatures was moving upwards heading to where she was lying down. It’s movements were so graceful she wished she could reach through the ground and touch it. The creature was now so close that only the ground separated her from it. The tree like structure formed only the upper part of its body. Below that it had a heart shaped head with hundred’s of blinking eyes set upon it. They all blinked at the same time when it looked her. The creature began to come even closer. It began to pass through the ground and came so close that the top of it brushed against her face. She tried to push her hand through the ground to touch it but the ground remained solid. The creature shrank away at this gesture and floated downwards gracefully until she could see it no more.
There was nothing more she could discover here. The door to reality called to her. She headed back through the door. She looked back one last time at this world and thought of the world that lied beneath it. A world she could only see but not touch.