6. The vines abruptly begin to move and shift in a way that suggests that they are alive, and one of them suddenly snakes around your ankle, and then another. No matter how you struggle, you are pulled back towards the standing stone. The vines are gentle: they do not hurt you, but they cannot be beaten. When you touch the stone, you are swallowed up by instant sleep and a lingering moment of awareness, if you are not a Legendary. If you are, you experience an instant of what it must be like to fly higher than the highest bird, and higher still: you see the hazy curve of the edge of the world, the rivers and oceans spread below you like threads and puddles. And then you begin to fall, peacefully and without fear.When she finally pulled away from the tower and returned more fully to her body, the vines were already moving. She had noticed at first, perhaps because it did not seem so strange for them to moving the way they did. It was only natural for them to be still and to move as well for they were both alive and dead, as surely as they existed in this world that she had never seen before but knew without having to. They snaked up towards her and she let them. It did not worry her that they wrapped around her limbs and pulled gently.
If she were to join them today, it would make very little difference. She was already there, in them, around them, part of them after all. She was apart of them as surely as they were a part of her. They were one and the same, exiting in a world that knew not the difference between kin and plant. It would mean very little to her to disappear amongst their arms forever losing her consciousness of the act and succumbing to the oneness that she knew must explain everything. She lay down cooperatively as more and more vines reached out for her.
They covered her gently, slowly, pulled her towards something and everything and nothing at all at the same time. They pulled her but she was already there. She calmly breathed in and out, the scent of the flowers filling her nose, as she was brought back towards the tower. She was anticipating the pain of touching it but was instead enveloped in a comforting, familiar darkness that was created of an infinity that of limits and singularities. Her mind was suspended in the darkness for a moment before her consciousness disappeared into sleep or dying it did not matter.
When she woke, the vines were gone, the flowers were no longer kissing her face and no smooth-faced tower was there. She didn't know that they should be though. She didn't remember anything of her dream and it didn't matter to her. All things were of little consequence in the grand scheme of the universe. She knew that she had a oneness with all things and dreams were no difference. They were collectively experienced even if memory failed at times. It did not matter that some things were beyond the reach of her mind. None of it was truly locked away forever. It lived in the memory of the flesh and blood that made up her body and was remembered in the very things that made up the entire Swamp and all those that lived in it.
So she lay there, feeling everything at once, acutely aware of the earth beneath her with her awareness soaring high above. The blossoms that grey by her side rustled in the wind and they fluttered against her cheek, reminding her that they were flesh and blood once and she was once leaves and petals. She remembered. She always did.