The Ghost Of Time

Epilogue

He opened his eyes, feeling a strange sense of calm as he looked up to the heavy grey sky. He felt the heaviness of having woken from a long, deep sleep. He lay awhile, watching clouds roll across his eye line high above,not feeling the need to move. Not feeling anything. He considered this lack of feeling but decided he didn't have the energy to worry about it. He didn't feel pain, that was good. He didn't feel cold,hungry or tired – also good. Briefly he wondered if he was dead,but dismissed this notion quickly, partly because it didn't bear thinking about but mostly because he felt so utterly calm. Surely death would not feel this – normal? Still. This feeling of nothing was strange, he tried to remember a time when he'd last felt like this but found he couldn't.

He tried to remember what he'd been doing before he fell asleep. He couldn't. He then attempted to recall where he was. He couldn't. When searching for a memory of who he'd been with, there was nothing. He ran through countless scenarios, tried recalling an image of his parents, his first kiss, a lover, his job. He failed to conjure a single memory. He wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep, to wake up when this strange feeling had passed and he could remember again. He found that when he closed his eyes, sleep refused to engulf him, he didn't feel tired. He'd rather have his eyes open and be looking up at the sky, beyond that he didn't feel anything.

Frustrated by his lack of memory, lack of anything to explain his current predicament, he lay watching the clouds, but eventually the urge to stand overcame him, he needed to know if he could stand. He hadn't wanted to look down at his body, vaguely assuming everything was in it's correct position and worked as there was no pain, but not wanting to look in case he was a horrific tangled mass of broken limbs. He very slowly sat up and looked down at his legs – both present – they looked sturdy enough, no obvious defects. He tried not to notice anything else about himself, not wanting to be overwhelmed by too much information at once, resigned to wait for memories to trickle back into his consciousness when they were ready to reveal themselves. He stretched out his hands on the grass either side of him – arms feeling steady and strong enough to support him, another positive discovery to tick off the list. He couldn't shake the feeling he was hovering just above the grass he was sitting on, experiencing a strange feeling of not quite making contact. The solid mass of the earth, he had a strong sense he should feel under him, wasn't there. It was more of a gentle touch, like the breeze through his hair,barely touching. Although now he was considering this, he couldn't feel the wind in his hair either, but he could see it ruffling the branches of a nearby tree. Very strange.

Very slowly he stood up, that odd feeling of not quite being connected to the ground under his feet was distracting, although he could walk without any issues. He decided not to worry about it – it was probably just a side effect from a long, deep sleep. Maybe he had sunstroke from lying in the sun too long. A quick glance to the leaden sky would debunk that theory but he found these thoughts slipping from his brain as soon as they occurred to him. They seemed to be irrelevant, erased instantly.

He appeared to float over the grass, barely making an indentation on the ground as he walked, he didn't allow himself to linger on this thought for long as his mind was occupied by frantically trying to remember his name. He drifted slowly to a lake at the bottom of the field he had woken on,reaching the edge he took a deep breath – it didn't seem to fill his lungs as he thought it should – and looked over the edge into the reflective surface. He needed to figure out who he was. Where he was. And perhaps most importantly, why.