It was there, hidden in plain sight amongst the stars, the cipher that contained the answer to the meaning of all existence, and after Nialla decoded it, she climbed to the roof of her house and breathed the solution to the riddle into the night air. Creation made itself visible to mortal eyes for the first time since the invention of vision and reached out with a stardust arm to greet her.

The touch of the cosmic hand tumbled the locks set in place to limit human perception and knowledge, and she was instantly gravid with omniscience. She stepped off the roof and sailed up past the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere, past the thermosphere, ionosphere, exosphere, and finally into space, where the tiny particles that made up solar wind swarmed around her now naked form.

“Welcome home,” the Voice of All Voices whispered into her ever-expanding mind, which caused her heart to open like a flower.

Although air and breathing were no longer a necessity, she sighed a lifetime of relief and drifted peacefully into the arms of eternity.

Text and Audio ©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys