Hesitant to extend my hand, but enveloped in a world of stabbing questions.
I hardly noticed that I was developing tunnel vision.

Everything around me seemed to fade out of importance, and things that would only later seem imporant to have considered never occured to me because I had no reason to suspect what happened next.

Some combination of blind faith and sheer curiosity brought my palm to meet “Clay’s.”
A warm, sharp crack, sliced through my conscious mind.

I felt the way I did again as a kid, terrified.
Disconnected from what I recognized as reality, yet a part of some vast and transient web… I floated timelessly in a state of hyper-awareness.

The terror abated. Replaced by a brief calm. Then my memory returned, and brought with it a desire for answers.

Where was Clay? Where was I?

“Be with what is, so that what is to be can become,” A voice emerged from the void. Or was it a thought? Was it my thought? No way to know, but it seemed anonymous, and comforting.