[Narrative] Lost
It was a small victory.

Jeff's hand wound around the black weeds that grew around him, as if they were the one thing that could anchor him in one place. One time. One universe. How long had it taken him? How long had it taken his mind to stop seeing? He held still, sprawled out where he was on the blood-red soil and turned his head to stare up at the alien stars. Unchanging. Still.

Beautiful.

In the loosest of senses, he was home. Not on Earth, and probably not even in his own universe. But here space was in three dimensions, ones that even corresponded to the three dimensions of his own body. Time moved in linear fashion here, neither too slow nor too fast. The laws of physics seemed to operate as he remembered them. Perhaps not much, but there was enough familiarity to anchor and focus his consciousness, enough to allow him to stop.

His hand tightened, fingers digging into the gritty soil as he closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. The next part would be more difficult. He'd already failed thousands of times, almost succeeded thousands more. He let new senses tugged at his awareness. A stray thought could show him trillions of years at once, every second of this planet's life and that of the pale red star it orbited. Another could send him a trillion light years away from here. He had to concentrate, force himself not to think, to just see again.

The multiverse unfolded in his mind, bits and pieces spiraling out of his awareness as his mind failed to cope with its vastness. Selective focus was the first thing he had learned, to keep infinity from obliterating his mind. He held his breath as he became aware of a Gordian knot of tangled universes, infinitely complex and beautiful.

The Nexus.

Reluctantly, he let go of the world, of gravity, of his physical location, of everything. There was no feeling of movement. He was simply elsewhere, and had always been there. Now he allowed himself to hope, and he took in his surroundings.

And screamed.