by Andrew
@drewlooksround
Night has fallen and there is no moon. All the birds have landed in their nests. You are an egg, and you will hatch tomorrow, but you do not know this.
Your shell – or the part of you that is the shell – is thick and warm. It is made of unbreakable material. It is the heaviest thing in the world, and it makes you feel unimaginably safe. It is a constant, perfect, unwrinkled, blanket.
The part of you that is not the shell moves around to become more comfortable. It has changed a great deal over the last few weeks. It has grown bones in some places. Skin, eyes, and even more complicated things in others. There are things that can receive light now, and things that can detect heat, and things that detect change. These all combined allow you to detect the waxing and waning of heat and light – night and day – through your shell.
There is something above you. A heat source that comes and goes during the day, but it has started settling down for the night. Since it can move around, and you can move around, you assume it is exactly like you. A larger, more complicated egg. You turn thankfully underneath it. Perhaps you will know more about this egg soon.
You know it is above you because you have discovered gravity. It is always pressing down on you. But you are unbreakable. You have become more and more aware of gravity during your time. As well as other unseen things.
You feel prepared and proud of the thing you have become. And your incredible discoveries have understandably made you tired.
You do not know how long you have been lying here, perfectly comfortable, as this ever-changing object, but you think you are done changing now. Now it is time for a new experience.
The sense of gravity seems to fall away, yet simultaneously remain. The light you are sensing begins to change, turning into colors you have never seen before. These newly discovered bones and eyes and other things seem to fade away from your sensations. They are replaced with other versions. Versions you can control with just your mind. Your mind stretches, and through thought alone you know what you are. You are dreaming.
The skin growing feathers grows further outward, the limbs you have grown grow further, your weightfulness never truly leaves you, yet with concentration you rise above everything. This shadow world you have sensed through your shell takes on some indescribable definition. Your mind has some way of filling in the gaps. The eggs beneath you have such strange shapes. But you are above and safe from all of them. You concentrate and rise a little higher.
You rise until you realize that everything you have sensed so far is simply sitting on the shell of a much, much larger egg. This egg is white and green and blue on the outside. You realize you have not discovered the color of your own egg. Perhaps this is the color of your egg too? Are there things on the edge of yourself? Do all eggs sleep this way? Such discoveries only reveal more questions. Perhaps you will fly higher, but for now, you dream yourself back to the surface, back to your egg, and curl again into your familiar shape.
You shift yourself again, becoming even more comfortable. You feel that – in a way – you are making the egg above you comfortable as well. And that mutual comfort comforts both of you as you both continue to sleep.
Tomorrow that might change. Tomorrow the shell might change into something else, something that can be broken, but only by you. But for now you and the shell are one and the same. Perhaps another night and day will pass, perhaps an uncountable number. An egg has no deadlines, no dental appointments, no interviews or press conferences. You have no schedule.
It is time to sleep. You feel like this sleep is the first time you will sleep completely as yourself. You shift one more time, before it falls over you. Your work is finished, and it is time to let your potential gather inside you. For tomorrow. Or the day after. Whenever you like. For now, though, you sleep. The sublime sleep of an egg.