Slabs of concrete broke away from the cracked pavement. They rose and bumped into each other, clumsily rearranging themselves until they formed a floating pathway that led up and over the yawning chasm in front of me.

The stones knew something I didn't.

I stepped towards it. I wasn't sure why. Each and every one of my attempts had led to disaster -- or worse, back to where I started. Nothing helped, and I've stopped listening to the people who claimed they knew more about myself than I did.

But the earthquake had left me disoriented. I wanted direction. And if I couldn't trust anyone else, I had to trust myself.

Carefully, I stepped onto the first slab. It held my weight. There was a geometric glyph carved upon each stone. It took me a few blinks to recognize the symbols as my own. Part of some abandoned worldbuilding project I had been obsessed with until I wasn't. I thought I'd scrapped them. Where did they come from?

I followed the pathway, stepping on and off each stone as I slowly made my way across the canyon. All it would take was one misstep and I'd disappear into the empty darkness.

It didn't make me nervous, though. Falling was easier to think about than the world around me. Without looking up, I knew that in the distance there stood crumbling office buildings, broken friendships and half-built monuments of what could have been, what would never be.

Everyone had believed in me. For a long time I had done the same. I'd taken life head-on and gave it everything I had. So what went wrong? Where did it all fall apart?

But there was no answer to that. It was easier to accept the past than agonize over trying to fix it. I messed up. Maybe the people who loved me messed up too. Or I just had bad luck. And yet sometimes I'd spot the familiar silhouettes of people, my family, standing in the distance. They were waiting for me. Even now, they still believed in me, and I could never bring myself to tell them to leave me alone because I needed them. Even if it wasn't true the other way around.

Enough time passed that I started to wonder where the pathway was leading me. Gradually, it descended into the canyon itself. Walls of rock climbed up around me. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. And just when I thought I'd explored every part of this place, I entered a different world.

Everything was petrified, locked away in another time. I passed half-destroyed fortresses, gnarled trees and entire sprawling cities, all carved out of the rugged rock faces that loomed out of the darkness. Life-sized sculptures of monsters roared silently at me, their eyes fixed at some point in the distant past. Something was wedged between a dragon's stone jaws. Brushing away the strands of spider web, I carefully unhooked the piece of parchment and spread it out. It was a map of the real world, with circles and lines revealing my former dreams of travelling abroad. I folded it and put it back.

I remembered. The details were fuzzy, but I could trace the bits and pieces of defining moments in my childhood that had shaped my surroundings. If only I'd retained that artistic spark. Though I wasn't sure how I would turn what I was feeling into a sculpture.

The pathway twisted up and down, through and around every nook and cranny, eager to show the world I could never return to. Every turn revealed another part of my childhood that should trigger something in me; a memory, the feeling of happiness, a spark of warmth. But my mind kept floating away. I didn't see the need to be here. I turned around, ready to go back—

My foot slipped and everything tilted sideways.

I grabbed onto the first thing within my grasp, but it crumbled to dirt in my fist. My heart dropped into my stomach, and I flailed before pain shot through my back. I caught myself before I could roll off the ledge where I'd landed; a few inches and I would've fallen to a certain death.

Heart pounding, I laid there on the ledge, gasping for breath. My eyes were locked on the infinite drop just a few feet away from me. Debris rained from above. I stared at the fine streams of dust, my ears picking up the crumbling sound that could've been mistaken as rain. But no. The cliff face was falling apart. Chunks of rock fell around me and into the canyon, never to be seen again. I opened my palm, and let the bits of dust fall, realizing what I'd done. Something nudged me, and I frowned as the stepping stone flew up, joining its companions to make an ascending pathway. I hurried up the stones, taking two at a time, then stopped.

Pieces of rock hung suspended in the air, pieces that made up what were just a few minutes ago the stone castles, towers and dragons of my childhood. Some were semi-arranged into their rightful places and floated on their own. Others pushed at each other, disagreeing as to where each piece belonged. Strands of spiderweb was frantically stitching the cracks back together, but in places the webbing had already unravelled.

Help, it said. Help.

It reached out to me, but the plea was buried under other words; I'm Fine and Your Fault and Don't You Come Closer. If I closed my eyes I could pick up something else too, amidst the chaos and restless rocks: silence. It felt impossible. It felt familiar. I was rooted to my spot.

Then, tentatively, I reached out to the structure closest to me--a watermill, now reduced to a small storm of rock splinters. My hands moved on their own, arranging and fitting the pieces together. The rocks were large but airy, as if they carried no weight. Before I knew it, the watermill was complete. It creaked as it began to move. I turned my attention to the house attached to it. Then another. Then another.

I went up and down the stepping stones, carrying pieces and getting lost in wrong turns as I familiarized myself with the world once again. The more parts I fixed the more certain I became. I was doing the right thing; not for others, but for myself. The past me was asking for help. I knew how it felt, to want to be alone and not alone. But at the end of the day, one was better than the other. I owed it to myself to do this. So I watched my surroundings come together, slowly and steadily mending itself after years of neglect. And for the first time in a long while, I felt complete. 

This is the rewrite for "Stepping Stones." Hopefully it's less dream-like and you can see my message front and center. <3