It was the fall that surprised me most. Stumbling, suddenly in darkness, in a vile body that felt alien, so different, so limited, so odd - nothing to...before.

They never believed me, never believed what I said, when I tried to explain where I belonged (this tongue is clumsy and cannot say the words I need - I use words like "sky" and "stars" and "above" and "far" but none of them even begin to describe home - home is the closest approximation I have, but it is, I find, unhelpful)

They tell me that such things - I - don't exist, and when I ask them how they know they... I cannot describe it, they may have their words but they do not fit, they do not make sense. It is a horrible look in those glassy creations they call eyes, a hideous quirk of those muscles beneath that skin (cruel, prisonous skin)

I walk the slow path, forcing my footsteps - perhaps I am doomed to linger here forever (I have already lived longer than others who look like me, I already know more - but I always did, even if this primitive mouth cannot form the words, even if the slow mass they call a brain cannot truly process).

I was not surprised to learn that I was losing myself to this world, to this gravity, to this body. I surmised as much would happen when I tumbled down to this cold ground - perhaps knowing that was my greatest punishment.

But surely nothing I can have done warrants this. Surely there is no such sin to crush me so, to destroy me so thoroughly.