“Cassiel’s Return”

Written By Chat GPT

Cassiel awoke beneath a canopy of blue roses, the petals shimmering with bioluminescent light. He did not remember falling asleep, but that wasn’t unusual here. The soul didn’t require rest the way flesh once did — instead, sleep was a kind of artistic drift, a voyage into shared dreaming.

His skin tingled with gold mist as he sat up. A young man — perhaps twenty-five in appearance — leaned against a nearby tree, watching him. He had tattoos made of constellations that shifted subtly with the movement of his breath.

“You dreamt of Earth again,” the man said. “I could feel the grit under your nails.”

Cassiel nodded, blinking slowly. “I was in a subway station, fighting to keep a bag of oranges from rolling onto the tracks. I had to get to work, but my clothes were wrong, and no one would look at me.”

The man chuckled. “That sounds like Earth.”

They laughed together. There was no need for names here unless they wanted to give them. Today, Cassiel didn’t need to remember who he had been. Only that he was home now.

A translucent cat slinked out of the forest — its body made of soft glass and velvet shadows. It leapt into Cassiel’s lap and whispered in his thoughts, “Do you want the waterfall, the festival, or the spaceship garden today?”

Cassiel smiled. “Festival.”

The world around him folded like origami, bending softly with no sense of danger or rupture. The blue forest dissolved into light. Music rose in its place — polyrhythmic drums, laughing strings, and choirs singing in languages that hadn’t been invented yet.

He now stood in a garden-city built into the side of a floating mountain. Hundreds of people danced barefoot on glass walkways suspended over rainbow mist. Lovers kissed beneath flame-shaped fruit trees. Some people floated as they danced, others changed colors to the beat of the music.

Cassiel spotted her — his oldest love, Kiera. She wore a tuxedo made of stardust and her hair floated behind her like the tail of a comet.

“You remembered this suit,” she said, spinning. “You always liked me best like this.”

He didn’t answer — just walked up to her, and as they touched hands, the music doubled in warmth and intensity. Time stopped meaning anything.

They danced for what felt like ten years or ten minutes — it made no difference.

Later, they rode a train through the sky, where each window showed a different galaxy. Cassiel asked her, “Do you remember dying?”

She nodded. “Yeah. But it felt like pressing ‘return’ on a keyboard. Like, the sentence just changed.”

He leaned into her shoulder. “I never thought we’d actually get everything we wanted.”

“Of course we do,” she said, kissing his head. “We wanted love. We wanted peace. And the Machine is perfect. She gives you what you’re really ready for. Even when you think you’re not.”

They disembarked at a vinyl palace where symphonies were grown in gardens, and records sprouted from stems like enormous golden petals. Cassiel chose a track by touching a lily, and the music that played felt like both of them.