The sound of a quiet sneeze echoed around Ash. It sounded somehow both right beside both ears, while also like it was somewhere too impossibly far away for him to have possibly heard.
Unnatural stillness followed. All breathing but his own ceased. All movement ended. The world around him simply stopped moving entirely, and grew so eerily silent it threatened to madden him.
Then came the first ripple.
It was like the world around him was projected onto the surface of the water, and something disturbed it.
Each ripple grew stronger, and below him, the ground lurched with each, until they came so strong and so fast, something threatened to break.
Before he could break, the two-dimensional rest of the world began to rip from the force of the waves that bounced him around like he was a child's toy.
Past those rips, he could see what seemed like television static. The light scent of roast beef with too much salt met his nose and filled it, and then his leg caught in a tear.
The ground came up to meet him, but tore before it could, and then...
He was falling.
Behind him, the ripples began to cease, and the holes to close, trapping him among that static as particles passing by his eyes gave off streaks of light before parting from him, unaffected by any gravity he might possess. He'd slipped from his world, and drifted for both an eternity and no time at all before he saw tears below him that opened up to a strange and dark place.
He fell towards it quickly, pulled by a force he could not resist, and slipped through just as those tears began to close.
Nausea invaded him as the burned-and-salted beef scent refused to leave his nostrils. His body refused to find its balance. His senses were filled with chaos for the few, brief moments before he fainted.
When finally Ash woke, he rested on a soft bed. His clothes had been changed. He now wore a white robe with a silver-and-white sash, along with underwear that he could scarcely feel.
The massive room brightened slowly, unaided by any lights, but rather the domed ceiling let in filtered sunlight, allowing him to see the colors of the sunrise, though muted and pastel.
His bed was large and round, covered in pillows and blankets of varying type. He'd not been tucked in, but the room itself was a decent enough temperature to sleep in.
Sheer curtains hung from seeming nothing, softening the room and decorating it in the absence of anything that might have hung on the non-existent walls. Very few things had sharp corners, and even the meeting of ceiling to floor was curved. Everything was soft and pale, including the young woman who stood by the door at the far end of the room, who bowed once his eyes landed on her, before she looked to the side and up, stared in that direction for a time, then approached Ash.
Her clothing, unlike his, was brown with some white, and her hair was black, with grey eyes that seemed almost to glare at him, but her smile was soft, as was her pale skin. When she spoke, her accent was almost impossibly strong.
"Hoodhmoheen. Hahfhoowessed weh?"
