Chapter 1

Sometimes, nothing can triumph the quiet countryside living offers. The sweet late afternoon spring breeze. The surrounding hills blanketed by the orange of the setting sun – the green of its grass dimmed by the star's golden glow – and the melodious musical singing of the birds making their way back home.

'If only everyday was like this.' He thought, inhaling a mouthful of fresh air, lungs expanding to a satisfying stretch.

"We have to get back soon, you know Aeron,'' A voice called from behind. "Dr. Anderson was adamant we get back not a second too late. I've already packed up so we can leave early."

"Just a bit more Cassy. You know what this means to me," Aeron whispered, exhaling slowly.

'Dr. Anderson be damned.' It was not everyday one got to experience nature, especially so for him. Cancer was not kind to him, not that it was to most.

Aeron was not always this way. Growing up, he had always been active. Two-time winner at his local racing circuit, an avid swimmer, and an all-round lover of outdoor activities – especially hiking and backpacking. Old age had not stopped him.

The meditative nature of having a vibrating steering wheel in his hands, taking sharp turns around tight bends, the purring and vibrations of the engine running through his body; the calm and all-encompassing pressure of the water as he propelled through it using his hands and feet, and the internal quietness walking in nature induced – its vibrancy and indifference dragging him away from his ever-present internal chatter and worry.

'What I'd give… to have those experiences again.' he thought, fists clenching against the armrest of his wheelchair, looking out into the hills from his farmhouse balcony.

Hope… hope had been one of the many things he had given up on ever since his diagnosis 6 years ago. A treatment was plausible, they said. A high chance of recovery. Others with similar cases had recovered. Yet, all was for naught, they were all paltry efforts at invoking hope from within him. And when later all hope was exhausted, their claims and poor attempts at trying to instill it into him in vain.

The creaking of the floorboard beneath and the rhythmic thudding of boots brought him out from his musings, as he turned around to look at his wife making her way towards him. Her grey hair was waving about aggressively and if 45 years with Cassy had taught him anything, it was that her hair moved about that way only once – when it really mattered.

"I know very much what it means to you, honey, but we really need to get going." Walking around to his side and getting on to her knee, she took his face into her hands, lovingly cupping and caressing his stubble of a beard, and looked him in his eyes – her warm brown meeting his steel grey.

"We're due back at the hospital in 2 hours, and the pain you have been complaining about the past couple of days is really concerning me," She said, eyes clouded with concern. "I know you agreed to come, but Melbourne can be really a pain in the arse with traffic, especially on Friday afternoons. You know how it gets. Let's get you ready and be on our way."

Looking into her eyes and watching the wrinkles on her beautiful face stretch and move about in worry, he found himself speechlessly nodding in compliance. She did have a way with tugging at his heart. As an orphan not wanted by his birth parents – not wanted – he was raised in different households growing up. It always heavily weighed on him, the feeling of not being wanted.

Till the day he met her. Her then bright blond hair being the first thing that captured his attention. She never failed to anticipate his wants or how he was feeling – a strange thing to him as he'd never had someone who did. Not a day goes by without him realising that she was the only family he has – the only one.

After all, family is always there for you – the ones that matter anyway.

He took his wrinkled leathery hands into her soft ones, eyes curved into crescents alight with forced humour, as he whispered to her "Yes boss."

"You haven't changed one bit," She said bursting out in laugher, a sound akin to the wonders of nature to him, as she moved to get him his clothing after giving him a soft kiss on the lips.

As she walked away, he couldn't help but notice a ringing sound, one that slowly increased in pitch and sound as he listened and focused. He likened the ringing to the ones he'd get in his younger years, after a loud party the night before.

Suddenly tilting forward in his wheelchair due to pain, he raised his hand to his solar plexus. Being familiar with the pain, he had not shouted out or made any attempts at calling for his wife. Yet, the ringing – that was new – continued to get louder. He called up memories of how he felt during his countless adventures, the meditative effect of them numbing his pain somewhat.

Yet the ringing continued to drone on, getting louder, approaching some sort of a crescendo as it drowned out the pain from his abdomen. There had to be a point where his eardrums would burst, he reasoned, raising his hands towards his ears. So focused on the ringing he was that he failed to notice as darkness slowly began creeping into his vision. Bit by bit, until it was too late, he noticed it was dark all around.

Unending all-encompassing darkness.

He stopped, noticing that there had been no more ringing, as if it were something he had been imaging all along. No pain in his ears. No pain at all. Nothing.

"Wait… I feel… nothing?" Confusion took over as he looked down – tried to. His heartbeat. The constant dull throb of pain in his bones. The muscle aches from old age and of being conscripted to a wheelchair for years on end. He felt nothing. Saw nothing. Just darkness.

"Cassy! Honey, can you hear me !?!?" He shouted, calling out to his wife.

"Cassy!"

"Anyone!" Deep down, he knew that something bad had happened. That there was a chance he had died. The pain he felt, and that odd ringing noise. He was old, and half of what being at the age he was, notwithstanding his cancer, was preparing yourself for your ultimate demise.

Death comes to all – or whatever.

But another part of his mind, the one that remembered vividly the conversation just now with his wife, and to the hospital he was to return to, could not bring itself to rationalise what had happened. Nor how it happened. Though not a religious person, Aeron assumed there had to be truth to what people said. About lights and angels and whatnot. Or their being some sort of afterlife. Yet, the suddenness of it and the manner utterly perplexed him.

"Is this all there is after death… unending darkness?" He said to no one, finally accepting the nature of what had happened to him and giving attention to where he was. He noticed, after calming down, that he was feeling warm. Warmth like the one he felt atop his balcony back home. But after more observation, he noticed that the warmth induced in him a familiar feeling – meditative calmness. A feeling he had come to associate with being in nature.

He couldn't help the instinctual reaction and mentally smiled at the stupendous joy that followed as he pictured the towering trees he saw during his visit to the Yarra Ranges National Park*, his wife at his side. Overflowing creeks, the chirping and buzzing of its bustling biome, her hand in his. A feeling of overwhelming joy swelling somewhere in his core.

Expansion – that was a word he could use to describe what overcame him after immersing himself in those vivid memories. Expanding and becoming something grander, yet still himself at the core. Accompanied with this feeling was the sudden awareness that he could move something. It felt ethereal to him, as if its existence was not real. It felt heavy yet malleable, twisting and turning at his desire.

He felt surreal, just moments ago he was getting ready to return to the hospital at his home. Yet now, he was in some sort of void after whatever happened that caused his death. He was surprisingly accepting of his situation.

Suddenly, his previously dark surrounding took on a mix of grey, gold, and blue hue, billowing out and expanding.

From each of the separate colours, Aeron felt a certain feeling. An understanding of what they represent. The grey invoked a feeling of protection, order and compartmentalisation. The golden a feeling of synergy, expansion, and control. The blue a feeling of hollowness, space and belonging. He couldn't describe how he knew that. He just did. As if something outside of his purview was informing him of their nature.

After what felt like an eternity, the colours condensed into three oval structures, each of them rotating before him.

'Well, they certainly don't look safe.' Looking out into his surrounding, he noticed that it had returned to darkness while the ovals were bleeding out their respective colours into their surroundings, the concepts they each represented a constant weight on his mind.

Momentarily ignoring the ovals, he focused inward – how did he do that – and noticed a pool of sort, containing wisps of grey coloured air, clouds more like. The wisps were moving about agitatedly in a certain direction, as if to try and rush out, and he felt the odd feeling that they couldn't because he did not let them. They were his.

Focusing, he pictured the wisps stopping and conveyed his intent to the pool in front him which immediately stilled. He paused, noticing how it felt akin to the moving after a long swimming session – sluggish and slow.

'Following that train of logic...' He pictured the wisps moving again and immediately stopped them after they began to, noticing how it felt a little bit easier after repeating.

Move. Stop. Move. Stop. He continued to move and stop the pool of wisps multiple times until it felt as easy as breathing to control. Following this development, he began to experiment by molding the pool into various shapes and objects. Squares, triangles, houses, cars. From one shape to multiple. From small to large. Throughout all this, he noticed the pool expanding and taking on a golden hue as it produce more wisps, yet its increase in size had no affect on his control.

After deeming it enough practise, he turned his attention outward and into his surrounding, focusing on the two ovals, 'What happened to the golden oval!?!?' The grey and blue ovals were rotating at the same place he last saw them with the exception of the golden oval. He recalled seeing a golden hue in his pool of wisps as it expanded when he was experimenting with them.

If there was one thing Aeron could pride himself for, it was his mind. His body had withered away with old age and later his cancer. But his mind had always remained the same, albeit growing sharper with age. He knew he definitely saw three ovals, and that the disappearance of the golden oval was involved somehow with the pool of wisps inside of him.

"Gold invoked the feeling of synergy, expansion and control if I recall. Expansion and control…'' Recalling the golden hue of the pool of wisps as it expanded inside him and his growing control, he reasoned that the oval had done what it was intended for. But he questioned, who or what made them? And what for? "Synergy probably implies that their must be other types of wisps… and that their absorbable? At this point, I should just take things as they come."

Thinking of something, he focused on the pool of wisps, surprised at the feeling of serene tranquility it radiated, and molded tendrils of wisps to reach out to the two remaining ovals. Two gaseous tendrils reached out into the darkness, their colours a mix of grey and gold, making contact with the ovals.

Blue and grey blinked out of existence, as the all-encompassing darkness returned.

"This is all very curiously interesting." He said out loud, feeling a concoction of emotions with a dose of trepidation. He was broken out of his emotional high when he felt a sudden uncomfortable squeeze take a hold of him. It felt as if he was being compressed by two mountains, all the while being dragged down into somewhere.

"This ought to be interesting. Cassy, thanks for giving me the most enjoyable life and old fella could ask for." He said with a heavy sense of loss. From the day he first met her till the end, she was family. His only family. She was there during his lowest lows, and she was there during his highest highs. Aware of all his flaws, yet loving and compassionate to him as if he were perfect. "I know you may never hear this but, if it weren't for you bulldozing yourself into my life, the man I am today would have never existed and for that I am truly thankful."

And with those parting words, Aeron lost consciousness.

*= A beautiful park located in the state of Victoria in the country Australia.