He says it's like watching skin under a microscope, or mushrooms fly. 

"I want to see mushrooms fly!" Anya bounces to His words, her mushroom-stem fingers reaching for His hand. He smiles. His grip is soft and desperate. Tomi, much calmer than Anya, holds His other hand. Tomi and Anya reach only His hipbone and look up when He speaks. He guides them through the dark sunken path. The wind is soothing, powerful as it comes from behind and blows Anya's hair forward, pulling her in like a magnet on metal splinters. She might have complained, but she anticipates the flying mushrooms. Anya and Tomi, overcome with something, notice the landscape is different at night; before, He did not let them out so late. They sleep by sunset and wake by sunrise, but today He is generous. Nobody asks why—in some child‐like way, they feel grown up. The little twins celebrated their birthdays two days ago, which only made them surer of this endeavor. He is not much older: an almost-adult. And He is happy for Anya and Tomi.

"It's high like a hundred of you stacked on top of each other!" Anya laughs, pointing to the hill's tip. They climb the wooden stairs, steep but safe. Each step fit perfectly, as if man and nature got together on a sunny day to mold the soil. Anya's feet carry themselves with gruesome excitement, but Tomi grows tired. So He takes Tomi by the waist and sets him on His shoulders. Tomi's new height allows for the village sprawled ahead to bling from a distance; how lovely, how lonely. But He is happy for them. The hill a curled castle fragment, the top a burnt candlestick. Its walls become majestic, its texture royal bark. He squeezes Anya's hand, knowing she wanted nothing more than to reach the hilltop. Everyone is dressed in black, glued to the night sky. And He made sure no one heard them leave. 

When they reach the top, the peak is not a peak but a round, sunken hole about the depth of three elephants. The circle seems ordinary, though one could imagine a rock falling from space to carve such a place, with creased walls and mushroom-top undersides. At the center of the circle is a human-ish imprint, like a someone-jumps-off-a-building-turned-crime scene.

"Do you trust me?" He smiles because that is all he knows. Anya tilts her head up, looks at the full moon above His hairline, then into His eyes. How kind they are, soft like His palms. She nods. He nods back, gently sets Tomi down, and guides them to the middle of the circle.

"Is it really like flying mushrooms?" Anya asks again. He laughs and reminds her to trust Him. It is like flying mushrooms, and cotton candy after a long day, and praise from mother, and everything beautiful all at once. 

Anya understands to be silent. Even Tomi curls his toes, seeing Anya's hungry eyes. He tells the twins to lie down and look straight ahead, beyond the circle-top and at the moon. He tells them to relax their small bodies. Then He sits on the ground, pulling out a notebook and pencil from under His drape. Tomi and Anya are lost in the sky, but Tomi makes sure to keep glancing at Anya. Just in case she disappears. 

With his pencil, He begins to scribble, watching Anya's crooked smile. Her hair sprawls from her scalp, palms open, legs apart, feet pointing up. For a moment, He pauses—such a small thing in such a rare universe. He continues writing, then follows her gaze upward till the pencil falls and His knees buckle. He drops with a thud to the floor. If everything was silent, it becomes more silent. If He was smiling, He is now laughing. If anyone has touched bliss, they have not touched all of it.

The silence disguises the noise in their heads—swooshing, gentle sand that turns to nothing. Tomi sits up and looks to his side. He rattles Anya's arm, limp and cold. He whispers her name, but nothing budges, not even her smile. Tomi walks over to Him. His neck is twisted for the above. He too is smiling. Tomi nudges His shoulder, then harder. He thinks to cry. Then he notices the notebook. Curious as he is, begins to read. Maybe he understands. If Tomi had known anything of death, he could not have known much. He never imagined death to come in silence, without tears, and leave behind joyous loved ones. Tomi sits next to Him and grips His hand. He looks up and hopes to join them. 

The next day, Tomi gazes out his window.He sees a green field and imagines the hilltop crawling in the back. His mother's hands rest on his shoulders as she absorbs the TV: TWO MORE FOUND HAPPY AND DEAD AT MYSTERIOUS HILLTOP. The reporter on screen interviews a boy who is looking at the sky: Why did you go there? What did you see? How come you're alive? The mother pulls him away, shaken by his silence. The reporter reads from a notebook found at the scene. The screen cuts to the closed-off hilltop.

Tomi is told to stay home unless at school. Someone always watches him, urging him to eat, play, live normally. He does. His mood appears stable, except for two teary scenes—noticing Anya's empty seat at lunch and spotting an imaginary cloud. Tomi knows Anya is gone. A month passes; no more deaths, only rumors.

Tomi waits for the full moon. That night, his mother checks on him longer than usual. He pretends to sleep till the door clicks shut. He wears black clothes and black shoes. He slips out the window, avoiding noise and people. He climbs fences and the hilltop's yellow-taped walls, never looking down. He reaches the top, breaths heavy. He sees the full moon and lies down on the human shadow, eyes and palms open to the above. Tomi feels lighter. His vision expands till the moon appears like a lid on a stove pan. Suddenly he sees past the moon, a waxy baking sheet, glossy till you put your nose up close. There is a heavy sensation, like rising and falling at once. Tomi hears the soothing wind, wordless poetry, crumbling stars. Sometimes the airless space pierces his forehead, only to disappear right before his eyes. Vague shapes and wood-like details, stars and many more things unlike stars. Flying mushrooms is one way to put it, but it only begins to explain the feeling of something strange, not the strange thing itself. Sunset walks are nothing in comparison, for they are not deadly. Beauty is only in the never‐ending, and this never ends—only when the body cannot hold on any longer. Some experience it many times, some only once, and most never do. Much is found in the space between, empty with dark color richer than oil paintings. Waves of light blend at particular angles with the grace of a thousand Milky Ways. The sun appears grand, but the faraway star is grander. The one after even grander. A star up close is nothing like a star far away. And if it kills, let it, because what rivets more than the endless? What satisfies more than all the answers?

There are three great tragedies: a blind person, most humans, and Me. But even a blind person is less tragic than most humans, too far from this hilltop. Too far from the universe. Yet Tomi is here. Tomi sees me and smiles. Tomi does not take Me for granted: the all-creator vast expansion. I am worthy of his attention, he knows I am. My tears on cold days are not enough. I am so large, why must humans be so small! Infinity should not be reserved for the lucky few, but I have no say. I am only beauty, filled with neutral stones. I am an unopened gift; I understand the dread of immortality. I know what it is like to wait a billion years just to be seen.

 

And I am the Universe.