Becoming Something Else

The grain sliced against her shins, tapping again and again each time she took a stride forward. Not a thought had entered her head before she began dashing toward the light, so searing hot and close that she could feel the hairs on her cheeks reaching upward. She couldn’t look directly at it, or she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. The stalks were so much taller than she was!

Darkness swelled around her, only lifting enough to show her the plants she was tumbling through at any given moment. On a night any different than this, she certainly wouldn’t have dared wander into the fields without a grown-up; of course, this was a very different night.

The orb of brilliance finally stopped cascading across the sky and disappeared behind the tall fingers of wheat, reduced to a dull, throbbing glow in the distance. Now that she had a specific goal in mind, her pace quickened as she put her arms up in front of her face to block the slapping foliage. Every yard that she drew closer, the glow became stronger and warmth soaked into more and more of her body. Her mind fluttered over the idea of danger, but a voice in her head beckoned her onward, told her to disregard all childish terror. After all, there was something unknown just beyond the bit of field there.

She burst through the surface of the grain, and instantly she was bombarded by a wave of intense heat and brilliance. Oddly, her skin felt no pain, on her face or beneath her clothes. The logical surprise of something that resembled molten lava was overruled by her need to experience what it was that had fallen from the sky.

Her short arms extended before her, the girl began to venture closer. Now was the moment; she would either be vaporized on contact or she would pass through some wondrous portal, just a pair of the fantastic things she had heard about in storybooks. Step by step she grew closer, until the crunching of the earth under her feet seemed to dissipate completely, leaving her only with the light, of which she was aware even if she closed her eyes.

One tiny shoe touched upon something not organic, solid and sleek. Her eyes popped open, and suddenly the light was gone. Confused, she looked down at what her foot had touched, but saw nothing other than the ground. No metal, no spacecraft, certainly no portal to another realm. Her bottom lip pouted downward as she flopped to the earth, sitting with her chin in one hand as she tried to cope with the disappointment. All this adventuring, the whole escapade into the unknown, was completely in vain. Now how would she explain her tattered skirt and muddy shoes to her mother? There was nothing for her to bring back, to show off to her family as proof that she had had a reason to wander out alone, in the middle of the night.

As her eyes throbbed, struggling to adjust to the sudden shift in light a few moments earlier, a sound began creeping into her ears. It was at first a soft hum, vibrating her eardrums gently, tickling her nose hairs, and then it steadily grew, until there was an abrupt clap! and her entire being started, causing her to look about frantically for the source. In the twisting shadows of the cornfield she saw nothing, though every part of her beside her eyes told her it was there. This wasn’t like the fresh, new moments of life when she just knew there was a ghoul lurking beneath her bed. This was nowhere near the terror that shook her bones whenever she rose from a sickening nightmare, and desperately needed her father’s strong, comforting embrace, letting her know she need have no fear, for it was only a dream.

No, this was something else entirely. Beyond all her childish preconceptions and fears, there was something inside her head assuring her past all doubt that what she sensed was there.

And then, her eyes saw what her skin felt, what her ears tried to recognize.