I'm Not From Earth - 19. Nineteen

Noise and darkness. Sinking and falling. Pinpricks of pain and a blizzard of sparks, swirling and filling his vision. Rover was trapped in a void in between consciousness and coma.

Neither awake or asleep, he dreamed with open eyes, feeling the explosive agony in the side of his head escalate to an eerie numbness. His thoughts were in a disarray. Worries and concerns lost their meanings, and Rover was left feeling empty. He was a starfish out of water; too simplistic to feel the dread of dying, but not unaware of the fact that he was slowly suffocating.

And then, he felt her again.

The vast, alien presence swept into his consciousness like a million streaks of static; intelligent and urgent. Rover began to slip out of his stagnant state, jolted alive by the invasion, or visit. He could not tell. He waited in the darkness, trapped in her oppressive force. And before long, the flickers of the presence's mind began to pulse faster and faster, until they became a chain of physical sensations and images, played behind Rover's eyes.

A beautiful crystal sphere rose before him, shining with a cold blue light that shook into the marrow of his bones. It was singing. A mournful, ringing tune that was overrode by the noise of shattering pillars. Although he couldn't hear it, he could feel it. Its notes were knives, stroking each and every nerve on his body; alerting him, waking him. So loud that Rover was sure everyone in the universe could feel it.

As if to confirm his wonders, the presence assaulted him with a torrent of images. His father, in an embroidered suit, dropping his glass of wine and clawing at his head. Somerset spitting out a mouthful of milk. A flock of geese in the sky, their formation scattering, squawking for the world to end. Palm trees swaying in the midst of still summer air. A slow satellite, suddenly tumbling, glowing with arcane tendrils of piercing blue. Winking stars that exploded into beacons. Planets of red, of blue, of green, spinning at an impossible speed; rings of glittering dust falling apart and fading. Billions upon billions of flaring lights -- minds of a faraway intelligence, pulsing at the sudden disturbance.

A crystalline ship, twirling through space, its momentum stunned stale by the clarion notes of the song.

Then silence fell upon everything as the glowing sphere sunk, engulfed in an ocean of blinding hellfire.

In a flash, the presence retracted, fading away and disappearing from him altogether, images of everything vanishing, leaving a hollow in the darkness of Rover's mind and his thoughts melted back into turmoil. More noise and falling. A stiffness from jerking his limbs in defiance to gravity. Pain, pain, and more pain. Nothingness.

A touch.

Not another presence entering his mind, but a soft, lingering caress that rested at each painful point on his back, leaving flesh that numbed in its wake. Not another presence entering his mind, but a warm, welcoming caress that tended to the burns on Rover's limbs. A healing caress to put him back together. A pair of green eyes burning.

A soft surface cushioned his crash.

*