I like it. A beach without an ocean, a man drinking without a mouth, falling without a place to go, taking up time without a timeframe, and existing in reflections… excellent.

The last line is particularly grabbing. Connecting everything back to the bottle is an excellent idea.

The first line has filled two times. And, grammar would improve the flow of the story.

Fixed the filled part.

And anything in particular when it comes to the grammar?

I was trying to keep it sounding… blocky.

I enjoyed the loop-synergy. It was great how it all linked up at the end. The language was truly that of a random story, with the contradicting yourself at every turn, explaining things bbecause the wqay you just told them was technically wrong.

I love that this isn’t a string of babbling nonsense, the usual, unfortunate trap in random challenges. It reads like a story, an engaging drawn out thought-like story. The kind of thing I really love. I love trying to describe ideas too big or odd for our brains to actually wrap around, it’s almost poetic and yet you keep the tone so casual. It feels like I’m just being told this, and am expected to have it make perfect sense, ‘because seeing as space was cheating, time was too.’ Wonderful.

Congratulations, you’ve won!

This story has been nominated for the ficly book.

When I read this, the desert that now is the Aral Sea came to mind after I saw the first two sentences.