The smell of earth is peaceful. The flower fields within me are graced with a light shower as I wake. When I open my eyes, colours flood my sight and bloom into bursts of petals. Light music plays, and it feels like a wave of warmth washing over me.

I am alive. I am living.

My joy is a firework show in me. I ignite into sparks and my heart is filled with light. I am climbing the stairs of life, and it takes me to somewhere ethereal. Somewhere otherworldly.

But beneath the soles of my feet, darkness creeps. It curls itself around my ankles, and I am dragged down. The bruises and scars are blossoms of the past, showered with blood. Pitch black washes over my mind, and I slowly fall into the void.

I want to crawl back up, so I clutch tightly onto what I can hold. It's hard. My fingernails feel as if they were being ripped out of my fingertips. I don't want to go back. Not to where I grew from. Not to the start, not to my start.

In a streak of luck, the darkness retreats back to the very bottom of the stairs. It lurks there, still. It'll never go away. I can never get rid of it. It will remain a hollow hole within me. A space that has rotted since long ago. A space that can no longer be fixed.

It will tug at me. It threatens to swallow me. I fear that someday it will.

I turn away from it, and continue climbing.