تندی باد مخالف سے نہ گھبرا اے عقاب! یہ تو چلتی ہے تجھے اونچا اڑانے کے لیے

Crows cackled overhead, trumpeting my arrival. The wind was cool, the ground beneath me the right interlude between soft and firm. There was an ant crawling up the side of the headstone. Trees lined the plots, gnarly branches spreading their fingers. The earth rolled off my tongue, tasting ancient and tired. The traffic was rumbling loudly outside, incessant horns, screeching tires, as motorcycles careened impossibly past cars. The tombstone was black with golden spires. Engraved in white writing below his father’s name:

تندی باد مخالف سے نہ گھبرا اے عقاب! 

یہ تو چلتی ہے تجھے اونچا اڑانے کے لیے

Don't be afraid of the surging tempest, o’ soaring eagle

The raging winds only serve to make you rise higher

I was rising. A tempest, a storm, raging, rising, ever higher. Higher and higher. He reached out and touched the sun. It was warm, glowy. He put his hand inside, pulled it out. It was made of light. He watched it in wonder. Silently. White spots twinkled in his hand. The hairs, each strand separate. Individual. Unique. He continued to rise. Higher and higher. Until he reached the roof of the world. He pulled his hairs out of his head, he saw his reflection in the clouds. He was bald. His scalp was clean, pure, sparkling. Light emanating from it. There was no halo, but he knew this to be The LightTM. Trademarked by the one and only. He looked into his eyes, the whites were whiter, the dark irises darker. His skin was scrubbed of all signs of age. He looked brand new, if there was ever such a thing, and eerie because of it.

Slowly, he began to descend. He did not know what was breaking his fall until he looked to his left, and that motion was strange too, as if his muscles had forgotten what that was like, and he saw wide, gleaming, feathery wings. Spotless. 

He alighted upon the ground, it seemed pleased to have him upon it, he felt. How he knew this, he could not tell. He could tell other things too. The trees swayed in welcome, each straining to produce fruit faster than the others, each to be the first to have the honor of giving him the literal fruit of its labor. The grass was sighing, feeling blessed with each step, even with the shadow of him. The air had caught its breath. Everything was still, frozen. The sunlight seemed to bow to him, and each step seemed to bring life anew into the world in which he had been thrust, or returned, he did not know.

His hair sprang to life, growing faster than anyone’s had a right to grow, and soon, he had a thick tuft of hair, on his light brown skin. It was still growing, longer and longer, until it had reached his waist, which was covered in a tunic, a black belt around the long, loose, flowing clothes. He stopped by the edge of a cliff that had formed within his few footsteps, and smiled. The world screamed.