He took a step off the concrete and onto frozen dirt. Grass stiff with

frost shattered beneath his feet. He took another step, turned, and the

city was gone- only fields stretching, stretching- left right back front

up and down. Dirt and dead grass as far as the eye could see, and

above that the dangerous blue sky, the one that seemed to invite

hallucinations and crush down like a prison, except instead of walls

this place had space; an endless, empty world, free for you to wander

until your feet dropped off or your mind melted from the sheer size of

it all. An endless space worse than no space at all. His breath puffed

out in damp, warm clouds, and when it came back the ice went into his

lungs and pierced him from the inside out. It hurt. His face was cold

and the sky was too blue, and all that blue would drive him mad. Too

much. No choice but to step toward the horizon, the endless

stretching line that did not change from east to west to south. No sun,

no clouds; the fields dead at his feet. He knows he has to find the city

again, he'll die without the city, but he doesn't know where it went or

where he should begin to look.