It started with a sound. Not thunder, not wind—just the soft thud of gravity shifting.
I blinked awake.
The sky was beneath me.
Clouds moved slowly, trailing across a glassy surface that looked like a floor but felt like the sky. Trees hung downward from floating islands, their roots tangled in air, veins of light pulsing from the soil like electricity. The sun glowed from below, casting the landscape in a surreal golden hue. My breath fogged upward in the chill. It was as if the world itself had turned upside down—yet, somehow, I remained anchored.
I stood slowly. Everything in me said I should fall—but I didn’t.
Above—or maybe below—stood my brother Aarav, feet planted upside-down on a distant island. His figure was faint, a shadow against the burning light beneath him. We stared at each other across the sky, two mirror images clinging to opposite worlds. Our worlds. The ones we once shared without question.
“Mira!” he called, his voice tiny against the vast silence. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer. My throat was tight, like I was trapped in a dream I couldn’t wake up from. I nodded, though he couldn’t see. But even if I had spoken, I wasn’t sure how to explain it. How do you explain something you don’t understand yourself?
“I don’t know,” I shouted back. The words seemed to hang in the air, suspended like the strange floating islands.
Around us, the islands began to drift apart, like puzzle pieces breaking away from one another, only to float aimlessly into the abyss. A deep sense of loss washed over me, as if the world I knew was slipping away, as if the space between us was becoming an irreparable divide. I didn’t know how I’d gotten here. The last thing I remembered was the two of us on the roof, watching stars we never followed, dreaming of futures we never pursued. The night had felt peaceful then, untouched by the weight of our family’s unraveling.
Now he was slipping away. I could see it in his eyes—the same look I had seen a thousand times when he was trying to hide his pain. The look that made my heart ache.
I ran. The ground pulsed beneath my feet, and with every step, the air shifted. As though the earth itself were responding to my movements, the sky beneath me reshaped. A bridge of glowing stone appeared, floating midair, stretching toward Aarav. It felt fragile, suspended between two worlds, but I didn’t hesitate. I had to get to him.
Halfway across, the bridge groaned, and something shifted beneath my feet. A symbol lit up below me, flickering like a warning.
"One may cross. One must stay."
I froze, my heart pounding in my chest. The words were simple, but they weighed down on me like a thousand thoughts. Only one of us could reach the other. The space between us had narrowed, but it wasn’t enough. And I couldn’t understand why.
Aarav took a step closer from his floating island, eyes wide. I saw the flicker of a smile in his gaze, but it didn’t quite reach his lips.
"Let me come to you," he called.
But the words felt like they came from far away. I shook my head, not because I didn’t want him to come, but because I knew better. This wasn’t just a dream—it was a test, one that didn’t allow for shortcuts or easy fixes.
“No,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if he heard. “You still have time.”
I remembered all the times he had stood up for me—when the world felt too heavy, and he held me steady without saying a word. Those were the times that had kept me grounded, the quiet moments where his support had been my anchor. I had never thanked him enough, never told him that his presence was the reason I could keep going.
Now, it was my turn.
I took another step forward, feeling the pull of the glowing bridge beneath me. Each stone seemed to hum with life, vibrating in tune with my heart. The bridge groaned, the air thick with tension. But I kept moving, the distance between us shrinking.
“I’m not falling,” I whispered, though the words felt too soft, too fragile in the face of everything I feared.
“I’m rising.”
I leaped. And in that instant, the world flipped.
---
I woke with a jolt, the familiar ceiling of my bedroom coming into focus. The rain tapped softly at the windows, the rhythmic sound calming the storm that still raged inside me. My heart pounded like a drum in a cave. I gasped, my breath coming in short, uneven bursts.
I turned my head.
Aarav was sitting on the floor beside my bed, asleep with his head resting against the mattress. His notebook lay open on his lap—doodles, lyrics, old dreams he never shared, each page filled with half-formed ideas that never made it beyond the page. The sight of him there, so real and grounded, made the dream feel distant, surreal, like it belonged to someone else.
He stirred as I moved, his eyes blinking open slowly. “Mira?”
I turned toward him, taking a deep breath to steady myself. “I saw you,” I whispered. “I saw the world upside down.”
He blinked in confusion, his face still soft with sleep, but the lines of worry that had etched themselves into his features in recent months softened slightly. “What do you mean? You okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said, the words a mix of confusion and clarity, both familiar and alien. “I saw… us. In another place. In another time.”
He looked at me, puzzled, but his eyes softened as he reached out to touch my arm. “You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely convinced myself. I couldn’t explain what had just happened, not to him, not to anyone. But something had shifted—something deep within me. I could feel it, like a piece of me that had been broken, now mending itself.
I placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “You still want to write that song?”
Aarav blinked at me in surprise, his expression flickering between uncertainty and hope. He didn’t answer right away, and for a moment, I wondered if he was still lost in his own thoughts. But then he smiled—faintly, but real. “Thought you hated my singing.”
I shook my head, a small smile tugging at my lips. “I don’t. I just forgot how much I needed it.”
That evening, we sat by the window, the rain falling in gentle patterns like a language only we understood. Aarav strummed his guitar softly, the sound of the strings breaking the quiet of the room. I picked up a pen and began to scribble words onto a blank page, the weight of them more than just ink and paper. We didn’t talk about the dream. Or maybe it wasn’t one at all. But I knew, somehow, it didn’t matter.
Something had changed, a quiet shift that neither of us could fully explain. But in the silence between us, I could feel the bond we had once lost returning, as fragile and strong as it had always been.
Now, every time I look up at the sky, I remember the world beneath our feet—the upside-down world where falling had been just another way to rise. And I wonder if we’ve all been living that way all along.
React
