It had been raining heavily all morning.  Small rivers flowed briskly through the gutters.  The clouds were passing, the sunlight was strengthening, and the downpour had faded to a misty drizzle, one that was pleasant to walk through but wouldn’t leave a lingering dampness.  The air hung heavy with humidity as she stepped out the door.  She briefly lifted her face to the sky so the moisture could settle over it in the thinnest of films.  Refreshed, she headed off and walked through the intermittent shadows of city-planted trees on one side and the intermingled sounds of cars and gutter streams on the other. 

A brief cloud burst disturbed the leaves above her and a cascade of large raindrops fell.  Some landed on her forearm, and she stared at rain that wasn’t rain.  Thicker than water, pearlescent, metallic silver, it drew out her goosebumps.  A car rushed past and a wave of gutter water soaked her. 

Her goosebumps became painful.  She watched miniature grass and trees grow from the skin on her arm.  Buildings sprouted from her distending goosebumps – steepled towers, battlements, turrets, taverns and barracks, shops and houses.  The city spread up her arm, stopping only when it encountered the forest below the towering, jagged mountains that had thrust out of her shoulder.  A river flowed from the slopes.  It meandered down her arm, out of the city, and onto the back of her hand where wide, flat farm fields had grown.  The river slowed, branched, and flowed between her fingers off the edge of the world.  She felt a breeze blow through the grain fields, the friction of water against the river bed, the condensation from mist and cloud on bare rock, the impact of every microscopic footfall.  Soil-thickened, atmosphere accrued, bedrock formed; her arm bore the weight of a world. 

She staggered away from this world, bewildered, unable to put any distance between it and herself, unable to look away.  She fell against a tree.  It yielded to her weight, swallowed her other arm, and held it firmly.  She tore away from the tree, but it yielded her arm reluctantly.  Her skin was now bark, rough at the shoulder and gradually smoothing as it got closer to her hand, which was now five slender, drooping tendrils.  Dense clusters of shocking blue flowers bloomed on these tendrils, unfurling in fast forward.  Their weight caused the tendrils to drag on the ground.  As quickly as they bloomed, the flowers faded.  Petals fluttered off in the breeze, choking the air.  They left behind shriveled ochre-colored berries that swelled and burst into clouds of silver dust.  More flowers grew to replace those that had wilted. 

Her tendrils dragged behind her longer and longer as she stumbled forward in a silver haze.  In her wake the sidewalk grew grass with a faint purple tinge.  Magnificent blue flowers sprouted.  They oozed thick silver liquid onto the pavement from their centers.  Vivid mushrooms contorted into suggestive shapes as they grew, exploded in clouds of sparkling silver spores, and released unusually colored butterflies, gnats, ladybugs, and dragonflies.  The ends of her tendrils burrowed into the concrete.  When they were stretched to their full length, she leaned forward in her haze and tugged.  They ripped free and she fell face first into a puddle. 

The world righted itself.  She stumbled and found herself standing in front of a fountain in a park.  It was sunny.  People were everywhere – kids shrieked in the splashpad, teenagers played frisbee, senior citizens talked on benches, cyclists called as they passed pedestrians.  No one noticed her or the world she carried or the plant that grew from her.  Nor did anyone notice that the fountain was frozen in time.  Jets and water droplets hung in the air, crystals in a chandelier.  She walked forward cautiously, sliding laboriously through the crowd.  She saw reality distorted in the stilled drops.  She slowly raised her arm bearing the new world, extended a finger where the nail had been replaced with a rocky outcrop, and gave the briefest brush to the nearest droplet.  The surface rippled.  Its pristine center froze, then boiled rapidly, then exploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb.  She was thrown backward, and her head hit the pavement. 

Her eyes opened in a mound of green.  Golden light filtered down through lush trees and ferns.  A heavy blanket of moss covered her from head to toe, weighed her down, limited her movement.  With a heave of her torso she ripped herself from the ground and sat up.  The moss conformed to her naked body, an inch thick.  She peeled it off in sheets, the sensation bordering between pleasure and pain.  Her arms were back to normal.  She stood up and left a black, body-shaped void in the swath of green moss. 

Her eyes flicked around the clearing nervously.  Her body was tense, her senses heightened.  The ambient sounds crowded in on her.  She heard every leaf move, every miniscule impact of a foot in a line of scurrying ants.  She heard cells dividing.  She heard the earth breathe.  A high-pitched hum made the air quiver.  A dragonfly landed on her wrist.  It flexed its clear wings, and a muscle in her back twitched in response.  Her own wings peeled away from her skin and glistened faintly red in the sunlight.  They shivered as they slowly expanded and dried, flinging a fine mist of blood into the humid air. 

The movement startled the dragonfly.  It left her wrist, hovering nearby.  She flexed her wings once, twice, acquainting herself with the necessary muscles. The dragonfly flew close, then darted a few feet away to hover again.  She followed slowly, picking a path wide enough for her to pass as the dragonfly flitted through the trees.  Her wings brushed past vines and branches, leaves and flowers, gathering golden pollen at the edges.  Occasionally they flexed instinctively, and the pollen would swirl through the air.  She came to a sudden cliff edge in the forest.  Several hundred feet below the trees continued to the horizon, broken only by a linear void that suggested the presence of a river.  She paused as the dragonfly flew off into the air.  Before she could think to follow, the cliff crumbled beneath her feet. 

She fell into a bank of heavy, wet snow.  Wind howled and snow and sleet viciously pummeled her skin.  She shivered violently and started moving, trying to stay warm.  A weight grew on her back.  Her wings hung heavy with ice and sagged under its weight.  The wind bullied her.  She struggled to stay upright but was shoved against a rock face by a violent gust.  She heard winter’s first thin veneer of ice crack; a single layer of tissue paper tear; a chandelier shudder from a heavy footstep; the thinnest, most brittle twig snap.  Her wings disintegrated in a maelstrom of snow and ice.  She felt a rumble in her chest that she couldn’t hear over the wind’s petulant anger.  The avalanche came from above and swept her away. 

She fought against the churning snow.  She lost up and right, down and left, forward and back.  She clawed against the snow in the churning blackness, and it gave way.  Warm, dry sand sifted through her fingers and slipped over her skin.  She burst out of the sand onto a beach; watched in a daze as the last ice melted and mixed with the pastel-hued sand grains.  She staggered up and tripped toward the magenta waves crashing on the rainbow beach, scattering sand as she went.  She didn’t get far before she fell to her knees, body and mind in shock from the sudden changes.  She fell forward on the sand and it exploded into a bright, colorful cloud.  Falling through it, she was thrust upright against the cold metal bars of a holding cell. 

Disoriented, she clutched the cold metal as the room continued to spin.  A cop yelled at her to calm down; another leered at her.  She was still naked.  She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead against the bars, slowed her breathing.  When she opened them again, the room had stopped spinning.  She cautiously pushed herself away from the bars and examined her body.  She felt her back, her arms, her face, but found nothing.  No scars, no bumps or blemishes remained to tell of wings or mountains, frostbite or bark.  What she did find, was light. 

Light pulsed along the lines on her palms, the fine network on the backs of her hands, and the creases on her knuckles, even outlining her nails.  Its colors recalled those of the rainbow beach.  She felt the light pulse with her heart beat, saw it flash in the depths of her irises in the cell’s dirty mirror.  She glanced at the bars of the cell, looked past them, and her body disintegrated into a swirling cloud of pastel-colored sand, reforming outside them.  Stunned cops drew their guns and fired.  The bullets passed through her body, spraying sand, but causing no harm.  She watched the holes close up, then glanced at the cops taking cover behind their desks. 

She exploded into sand.  Desks were overturned, people thrown backward, walls cracked, lights sparked and went out, windows shattered, and doors were blown off hinges.  The sand hung in the air, catching its breath for an endless second.  It gasped, then rushed into the street.  Her body reformed, only for a swift breeze to come howling between the buildings and sweep her away again. 

The sand was deposited on a hill at the edge of a corn field miles away from the city.  Her body rebuilt itself grain by grain.  The light continued to course over her skin, growing stronger.  She could feel it race through the fine creases, each pass making the hair on her body stand on end. 

The sky was overcast, and a dark wall of clouds was quickly approaching – the deep, iron blue color hit her in the stomach and forewarned of violent weather.  She watched them approach as her whole body pulsed with pearlescent light.  Static started to jump off her skin.  Her hair rose in a halo around her head.  She raised her arms to the sky seconds before the lightning struck.  Electricity flashed back and forth between her and the clouds, changing color as it drew the light from her and scorched away her body.  She became part of the lightning and was drawn into the clouds. 

The storm was violent.  It had an unusual amount of oddly colored lightning that branched through the clouds continuously, a restless serpent confined to a cage, looking for escape.  The accompanying downpour assaulted the ground, ripping leaves from trees, flattening grass, and trying to drown anything that needed air to breathe.  Eventually the lightning faded, the rain lightened, and the wind calmed.  Water ran in sturdy rivulets down the hill and collected in a depression at its foot – a marshy place that always had mud, but never standing water. 

The water soaked into the ground; a light breeze rustled the grass still standing; the rain gently caressed the earth.  A mound rose from the mud, struggling against its greedy suction.  Great globs slipped off and plopped back into the mire.  She wrenched her head from the muck and gasped for air.  She tore her hands and knees from the slime and crawled to firmer ground.  She fell on her back and let the rain wash the mud from her body. 

She was so tired.  She closed her eyes.  Her body slowly sank back into the ground.  The soil welcomed her, cradled her.  She spread her fingers and held hands with roots.  They entered her body lovingly, respectfully.  She felt them spreading through every vein and capillary, mirroring the paths of her nervous system.  They exited from her fingernails and toenails; slid from her eyes like tears. 

A tree grew in the depression.  Though the trunk’s bark was rough, it gradually smoothed along the branches.  These were flexible and hung low, sprouting from the trunk like water from a fountain.  They were weighed down by luxurious clusters of blue flowers with multicolored centers that faintly glowed.  Whenever they were jostled by even the smallest breeze clouds of silver pollen were released.  The trunk resembled a feminine body, and its rough bark suggested fantastical patterns – a dragonfly flew over a city filled with bridges; water flowed off a precipice into a bottomless abyss; mountains towered over forests; sand tumbled along the lines of the wind; lightning reached out from a thunderhead.  Each shape ran into the others.  Lines were blurred between ideas, making one question whether anything was there at all, or if they were hallucinating from breathing in the heavy cloud of silver pollen than hung in the air.