Daniel groaned softly as both breath and consciousness returned to him. The fact that he couldn't see wasn't his greatest concern. Most troubling was the impossibility in his mind, thoughts darting as he tried to get his bearings. There was something layered over his recent memories, a singular sensation that made no sense. Falling.

He was driving to work, and plummeting. Glancing idly at his phone late at night, while wind whipped around with him in blind panic. It seemed like a delusion, a false memory glazed over his normal life combined with a distortion to time. There was no immediate sense of when this intrusion began, but it grew stronger as Daniel worked his way forward. Yesterday, or what he assumed was yesterday, was almost entirely blotted out by the terror of free fall that clashed with what few memories made it through.

He'd gotten a call from someone? The details were hazy and a dull headache now crept into the tortuous mental landscape. Trying to focus on his last memory only heightened the pain without offering additional insight. He begrudgingly surrendered, and the fog that was parting rolled back into place.

The young man only a few years out of high school briefly wondered if this is what it meant when life flashed before your eyes. If he really was falling to his death. No, Daniel thought. He felt solid ground beneath him. He was face down, a fact made clear as he struggled to breathe and choked on dust. Propping himself up by his elbows, Daniel dusted off his face and opened his eyes. What he saw made him scramble back, bumping into something hard.

"It's an island," Daniel said breathlessly, clutching at the tree he'd backed up against. He'd been prone near the edge, looking over it as he'd opened his eyes. It wasn't water that met his gaze but open sky. Normally Daniel would have assumed he'd landed on a cliff, but that would require the land he was on to be connected to anything. Instead, Daniel only saw empty air surrounding him. He briefly considered if there was a column supporting the island where he couldn't see it, but there simply wasn't anything under him. "It's a floating island?"

That was ridiculous. He laughed despite himself as an image of the stereotypical deserted island flashed through his head. It was almost there, a single tree, barely enough land to pace around. The tree wasn't in the exact center of the island and contained no coconuts, however. The farthest the edge went from it was a dozen meters at most. All that was missing was the water and an unusually charismatic volleyball.

Daniel frowned as he took in his meager surroundings. Not only was this island nonsensical, but it was also odd. He could clearly see where he had landed, if falling was how he'd come to this strange place. There was only dirt around the tree, no grass. Two swathes of dirt had been burned, arcing out from the area he'd fallen. It was a familiar pattern, but Daniel couldn't place it amid the absurdities that were ass

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