I’m conscious, but I can’t open my eyes. I’m laying down, and it feels like grass underneath my palms. My eyes open unwillingly, and I’m blinded by a beautiful moon in the sky. A moon that is twice as large as I remember. The sky is a beautiful shade of plum, navy, black, and gold, glittered with stars. My eyes water at the sight of the shooting stars leaving thousands of minute streaks across the canvas of the sky. When I sit up, miles and miles of grass come to view.

The last memory I have is riding in the car looking at James. James! Where is he? What happened?

My fingers trace the grass around me and stop as they touch a beautiful flower, a flower I have never seen in my life. A flower that wasn’t there before. It’s a beautiful hue of blue and glows so bright it hurts my eyes to look directly at it, as if it carries the same attributes as the sun. The grass is littered with them now, and the sight before my eyes is so beautiful that for a while it masks the ugly that I was about to see.

As these thoughts cross my mind an excruciating pain surges through my head. I bring my hand up to the pain and feel a warm liquid, blood?

It comes in a flood.

In such a short amount of time my mind rushes through the memories of not so long ago. I was on my way to a concert with James. We were waiting at the intersection just before the freeway. I was staring at him, the light turned green and he slowly drove forward.

And that’s it, I’m left looking at a bright set of headlights coming towards us from James’ window. My breath is jagged and I’m panicking. This really happened.

By why am I here? Am I dead? I must be, the world resembles my own, but I know I’m not home. I stand up and wipe the blood from my forehead onto my clothes. I scan the field but all I can see for miles is green grass, blue flowers and the night sky. My gut tells me to go straight and I walk for a couple of minutes only to reach a small path in the road I couldn’t quite see from where I was previously standing.

I follow the path as it quietly winds down through the grass, locking my eyes and focus to the thin, thread-like dirt path until the path disappears out of my sight as quickly as it came. When I look up, I am enclosed by thousands and thousands of tall and short willow trees. Willows at heights unimaginable in our world. They have created a dense dome with a small hole at the top, letting enough moonlight in to still be tremendously bright. In this dome is a large patch of grass and a pond at the center. Half of a bridge floats across the pond that leads to a gazebo, with nothing else holding them up other than the seam of the bridge touching one side of the land.

I walk and meet its edge. Terrified, I travel up the bridge to find a small podium and a wooden box placed on top. I open the box to find a golden compass, a vile of a dark red dust, and a glass jar containing one butterfly. I lay the compass and the vile back onto the podium and twist the cap off the jar to release the butterfly from its confinement, and to my surprise the butterfly transforms in front of my very eyes into a small, beautiful fairy-like figure.

Her wings are paper thin and look as though they are made of thin glass. She has blonde hair, curled to perfection, and lips so red they must be made of rose petals.

She grants me half of a smile and gives me the information I have been searching for, breaking my trance forever.

“Hello there, you’re a beautiful soul I can tell,” she looks me up and down, she’s sweet and smug at once, “this might be easy. Welcome to the Land of Arbo.” Her arms extend out, presenting the willows I already see. “The land of the trees. Your soul is trapped here, and so is James’. In order to move to the next dimension, you must find him. And I’m here to help.”