Chapter 0: Substance
I’d like you to, for a moment, imagine yourself submerged in something that’s not quite water. It’s heavier and stickier and warmer, the kind of consistency you get when you boil down sugar to create caramel, and when you add the cream to make butterscotch.
Substance is blue and green and grey, a dark turquoise that leans into navy pockets and right back up into little fluorescent streaks of light. Your wings are spread open, even though they are only arms. They stretch gently outwards and your head arches back to look up to more and more endlessness. You can breathe slow, deep breaths but it’s almost as if you don’t need to, are you alive anymore? Is this where our souls go when we die? When we sleep? When we wait in between our many lives? For a moment, imagine Eden, the boy named after the garden, floating here in this empty space. His light curls reflecting yellow into the Substance around him, and his arms wrapped gently around his torso. He is asleep.
