A girl looked up to the sky, where an eye that was also a sun stared at her from a sky of crimson so deep it might as well have been blood. They exchanged so much through gaze alone, something like a greeting, something like recognition.

  They eye-sun seemed happy to see the girl, if such a thing could bear the burden of feelings, and the girl found herself smiling at the burning mass so many miles away. She missed it too, and was happy to have returned to the fields of bleeding veins, though she was curious as to what brought her back.

  Are you ready?

  It came from her right, through a voice that was more like a thought. The girl turned, bloody tears flowing from her eyes at the intrusion into her mind, and witnessed the man of ever changing flesh. But was it a man? His form shifted and molded and changed. It hurt to look at, but she'd handled worse pain before.

  How did she know that?

  No idea, she just did.

  The girl tilted her head to the strange thing in front of her, assuming it to be the same being from before. "Ready for what?"

  Another journey.

  Her eardrums popped and blood started to exit her ears. She gave the thing a nod.

  "Will it be like last time?"

  The man-thing let out a chuckle that changed tunes as often as his vocal cords shifted alongside the rest of his body. He spreads out his arms and gave her a smile filled with teeth that were obsidian and then mercury and then—

  No journey is like the last.

  "I feel like that's bullshit," the girl said.

  Another chuckle, then the thing took a step—

  His legs weren't long enough to close the distance in one stride, and yet he did, as though the concept of space were just a suggestion. He pulled an arm back and formed a fist. The girl tilted her head in confusion.

  Then he punched her in the face, whipping her head back and making her see stars.

  Literal stars, ones made of flesh, they connected to each other through an intricate web of veins to create a macabre set of constellations. They emitted as much heat as as any star, but theirs came from friction rather than fusion.

  It reminded her of the fields in how something normal was twisted to mimic biology, like the heart-fruit she had bitten into the last time she was here, like the—hmmm, was she floating?

  She was, boundless vessel in a space filled with nothing but flesh-stars and her. That wasn't ideal. She rested her chin in a hand and started contemplating the stars, surely they held the secret for her escape? Last she checked, space wasn't exactly conductive to life.

  Though...she wasn't breathing, hadn't needed to since she was sent here through knuckle teleportation. Maybe her strange guide granted her super lungs? That would be neat.

  There were three constellations in front of her. A crane, a hare, and a bear.

  Maybe she had to make a choice? That seemed like the most logical conclusion considering the little vein needles that were floating in front of her. Each originated from a constellation, how she knew which one was a mystery.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The stars should've been too far for her to tell, and yet she could.

  She shrugged and picked the bear, because bears were cool.

  She took the needle and examined it, something like an instinct passed over her mind when she grabbed it. A strange instinct, the needle didn't look long enough to reach her heart. Well logic was already a little twisted here, so why not?

  She jammed it into her chest.

  The effect was immediate, so much blood poured into her system. Pushing her heart, pushing her veins. It didn't belong in her body, couldn't survive in anything mortal, so it tried to change her to a suitable vessel.

  It failed.

  The girl had a moment to scream before she exploded, each chunk of who she was falling into the void forever and ever. Well, not really, eventually space turned into sky turned into a cavern of sharp teeth, and the pieces of who she was crashed on the quartz of the bottom.

  It was quiet in the cavern, until the first mouth formed from the viscera.

  It said words it shouldn't have known, from a language long dead and lost to time, but that wasn't important, they'd forget in only a few minutes.

  Soon it was joined by more as each morsel began to change. Each morsel of flesh, unique and distinct, molded themselves into a miniature of the girl, somehow all the same size despite the chunks being far from equal.

  Perhaps a hundred individuals were staring at one another in confusion. They all looked up to see the teeth of their prison, and each tilted their head. What now? They thought in unison, and it was so many thoughts running through one soul that each felt a slight ache. Only slight though.

  One of the girls huffed and decided to climb up the cavern, while all the others were attempting to put themselves back together so that they might become whole. It was a futile effort, and yet they kept trying all the same.

  They were separate, but their thoughts were remarkably similar. Except for one, the one who climbed. She felt...disconnected from the rest in a way.

  Which was worrying, but pondering it would be of no use to her, so up she went.

  When she got to the top, an Animal was waiting for her. She stared at a wolf that was a cat that was a rat that was a bear—

  It hurt to look at, but they both seemed to find each other interesting so It was fine. The-Animal-That-Was-Everything opened it's maw and laid it down on the ground like a gateway. The girl perked up and hopped into its mouth, landing on a tongue that was covered in saliva. She almost slipped, but managed to hold her footing. The Animal lifted its maw, keeping it open slightly so the girl could see, and began to move.

  All while the rest of what she was continued to struggle with becoming whole.

  The girl didn't seem to mind, holding onto two teeth with jovial cheer as she watched everything that surrounded them. They were in a strange lands of trees, great monkeys swung in the treetops in search of something to eat. They didn't have fur, but instead carried a hide of rough leather, and the sounds they made sounded too deep to belong to a simian.

  Eventually they reached the centre of the forest, where an altar of alabaster rested, untouched by the nature surrounding it. The-Animal-That-Was-Everything laid down it's maw on the altar, and the girl jumped out onto the carved sediment. The thing gave her a nod, then headed off into the forest, she waved at it as it left. Only polite really.

  She walked over to the centre of the altar and sat, waiting, staring at the eye-sun through the trees all the while. It seemed concerned with how small she'd gotten, but the girl reassured the cosmic space ball that she was fine. It conceded and referred to her expert analysis of herself! What a polite star.

  She rocked back and forth, waiting for something to happen on the altar she sat on.

  Eventually, something did.

  A skeleton with patches of flesh carried over a struggling monkey to the altar. At some points there were muscle or tendons, at others they were missing entirely. Somehow the thing still managed to move those portions.

  It lifted the monkey high above her, and shaped the bone of its left hand as a blade. It sliced open the monkey's artery and soon she found herself drowning in blood as so much more than should be possible spewed from its neck.

  The blood wasn't blood, it couldn't be, it was the consecration of something wrong brought onto her mortal form as a blessing. So deep with meaning as it was absorbed by the girl on the altar. It bloated her, but this time she didn't explode, this time she grew until the blood had dried and she was her original size.

  She looked down at herself, then up at the skeleton. "Uuuh, thanks. I guess?"

  The skeleton shrugged, then pointed up at the sun. The girl turned her gaze to it and found it had gone to a deeper shade of red.

  The eye blinked, and the girl disappeared.