Warmth.

  That was the first sensation—a gentle, encompassing warmth that seemed to cradle consciousness itself. There was no body to feel it with, no skin to register temperature, just the pure essence of warmth wrapping around awareness like a mother's embrace.

  Time had no meaning here. Perhaps it flowed like honey, thick and slow, or perhaps it had stopped entirely. Without a heart to beat or lungs to breathe, how could one measure the passing of moments?

  Memories flickered like distant stars, more substantial now. Remi. That was the name—his name. It floated through the warmth like a leaf on water, carrying fragments of a life that seemed simultaneously immediate and ancient. His father's disappointed frown. His mother's worried eyes. Rachel's ughter echoing down the hallway. The weight of Andrew's D&D books spread across his bedroom floor. Johnny's excited rambling about the test anime episode.

  Each memory sparked others: the humiliation in the cafeteria, the fear in the bathroom, the long walk along the train tracks seeking escape. But here, in this warm darkness, even these painful memories lost their sting. They were simply scenes in a story that had reached its final chapter.

  What would Rachel do when he didn't come home? Would she miss their bickering, their shared jokes, their quiet moments of sibling understanding? Would his mother bme herself, adding one more worry to her collection? Would his father finally realize that his rigid expectations had helped drive his son away?

  But even these thoughts felt distant now, like watching ripples spread across a pond's surface from very far away. The warmth wrapped around him like a bnket, gently pulling him away from the person he had been.

  Sound existed as gentle vibrations, muffled and indistinct. Sometimes they formed patterns that might have been voices, or perhaps they were just the cosmic background noise of existence itself. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except this perfect, peaceful suspension.

  Occasionally, other sensations would ripple through the warmth—gentle movements, subtle shifts in pressure, the faintest hint of something that might have been light filtering through the darkness. But these too were abstract, disconnected from any need to understand or interpret.

  There was no fear here, no anxiety, no desperate need to run or hide or prove oneself worthy. Those concepts belonged to another existence, another story that had reached its end. Here, there was only peace and potential, like a seed waiting in fertile soil, neither awake nor truly sleeping.

  The warmth pulsed sometimes with what might have been heartbeats, though whether they came from within or without was impossible to determine. They created a rhythm that needed no understanding, a music that spoke to something deeper than thought.

  Awareness expanded and contracted like breathing, though there were no lungs to draw air. Sometimes it spread out so far that it seemed to touch the edges of everything, and sometimes it contracted to a single point of existence. In those contracted moments, fragments of his old life felt crystal clear: the way Tawnee's eyes crinkled when she smiled in chemistry css, the proud set of his father's shoulders before disappointment became his default expression, the exact shade of blue that Rachel had painted her bedroom walls despite their mother's protests.

  But with each expansion, those specific memories dissolved into something rger, something that transcended individual moments and emotions. He was both Remi and something more—or perhaps something less, stripped down to pure potential, floating in infinite space.

  There was no rush to change, no pressure to become. This was a space of pure being, of existence without expectation. Time meant nothing. Identity meant nothing. There was only the warmth, the gentle pressure, the floating, and the perfect peace of potential.

  Sometimes, very faintly, there would be other presences—simir sparks of awareness floating in their own cocoons of warmth. They were neither close nor far, as distance had no meaning here, but their existence was somehow comforting, like stars sharing the vast darkness of space.

  And so awareness floated, neither awake nor asleep, neither being nor becoming, suspended in the perfect moment between what was and what would be. No thoughts disturbed this peace, no memories demanded attention, no future called for preparation.

  There was only now.

  Only warmth.

  Only peace.

  Only potential.

  And somewhere, in a reality that operated on different rules entirely, an egg rocked gently in its nest, cradling a transformation that would bridge worlds and change destinies.

  But here, in the space between, there was only the eternal moment of becoming.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  End of another chapter!

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