First Step

[Belle]

Belle struggled to open her eyes. Her lids felt unnaturally heavy, as if someone had hooked sandbags to them. She strained, trying to fight past the muddied fog clouding her thoughts. At first, all she could see was a sliver – a pale white nothing. Then, as the sensation of heaviness eased and she was able to at last open her eyes further, she realized that that was all there was to see.

Belle jerked, sitting upright. The sudden motion brought with it a churning, fierce wave of dizziness. She fought down the urge to retch as her vision swam. She clutched her chest, breathing hard as she sank back down and turned over, pressing her face into the blank, featureless 'ground' as she waited for it to stop tossing like a dingy caught in a typhoon.

A minute or so passed. At last, the floor beneath her apparently decided to have the decency to stop rocking back and forth. Carefully, not wanting to repeat the episode, Belle pushed herself up onto her knees. Then, with shaking legs, she rose to her feet, and looked around.

White ground, white sky, both were so featureless, so utterly devoid of any distinction at all, that she could only just barely make out a faint discoloration that must have been the horizon. It was a void, and yet, this emptiness wasn't entirely empty. Eight gates stood in the distance, arrayed at evenly spaced intervals around her. Each had a different form, and each was clearly made of some different material. Some gleamed, while others smoked. One simply seemed to be two bowing trees. They must have been enormous, she realized, because when she took a few experimental steps, neither of them shifted in her field of view.

The only other thing was a patch of grass. Incongruous, defying all logic, it sprang out of the white nothing that was the floor. From it, a small sapling sprouted, a handful of leaves soaking up what they must have imagined to be sunlight.

“Hello?” she called. No answer.

Belle felt another bout of dizziness coming on. She pressed her hand to her face. Some of the shroud in her brain thinned. Fragments of memory filtered back to her, message bottles washing up on the shore of her consciousness: Omni, the strange childlike being, talking to her, the world before, her home, all coming in bits and pieces. She had a mother, a father. No siblings. She had been going somewhere. An arcade? Only a few memories remained crystal clear.

She knew, intellectually, that this should have scared her, but it didn't. The world seemed like so much a vague dream, and she could only grasp onto a few particulars. Was she dead? This didn't look like any afterlife she had ever imagined, and Omni certainly wasn't how she imagined God to be.

One thing she knew for certain: she wasn't going to get any answers just sitting around next to a tree. Belle figured she was lucky that, at the very least, her clothes were comfortable: a pair of well-worn sneakers, denim shorts, and a zip up hoodie over a tank top. Turning to face the most familiar of the gates – a construction of shining steel – she took a few steps. When the sickness didn't assault her, her stride lengthened. The small patch of grass faded into the distance behind her, becoming a speck of green, fuzzy and indistinct, as the gate loomed slightly larger.

What felt like an hour passed. She was near enough now to see figures around the base of the gate. At first she thought it was her imagination, because they were nearly as white as the ground they stood on, but as she got closer, she realized that they were simply men in armor. At least, she assumed they were men. For a moment, she wondered if she should turn around, but then realized how pointless that was. There was nowhere to hide in this place, and they were almost certainly already aware of her coming. Taking a breath, she continued walking.