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There was nothing.

Then there was something.

It was a burning sensation. It felt localized but also everywhere; it incorporated or called on everything to work with it, like a conductor priming musicians to play. A point in the distance grew. It met with swirling colors of red and yellow and sometimes purple, and something that could have been noise if there were ears to hear it. But as of now, if there was even such a thing as now, this point was just a point and everything else just was.

Maybe this point was a large mountain in the distance with tall oaks criss-crossing it on the side that had the most sun and rain and large pocked rocks and snow on the other. So large, so immense that it didn't need a planet from which to form. It was itself a planet of two distinctive sides, floating silently along its gravitational path.

Maybe, instead, this point was just that: A mathematically created fiction where two axes met on graphing paper. Infinitely small but still real, as long as a mind was there to intuit it. There was no way to know what it was because there was nothing else besides it that had a form. No reference. It was the only thing there that wasn't a force, an act, a verb. A predicate without a subject.

The red began to undulate and swirl faster around this point. The pressure – there was now or always had been pressure – pulsed in a strange way. It was like water moving through an underground aquifer, gaining pressure as it flowed.

The reds and yellows combined and separated to some unknown pattern. Things in this odd world (or universe; there was no way to tell) were changing, growing. Something was happening. The trees on the warm side faded away; the snow became nothing or just went back to being nothing. The point contracted.

A feeling of loss entered the world. It was then replaced by an awareness that in order for a predicate to be a subject must be. The loss must come from somewhere. This thought didn't emanate from the point; that hypothesis only existed for as long as it took to form and then be discarded. Objects are known not by themselves, rather by or through others. A rock cannot know itself. The moss on its side, the little beetle making its way across, they know the rock.

The point expanded. Pressure increased. The reds and yellows of the world wrapped around the point, forming odd shapes that looked like petals that flared. The red, once only a dull metallic red of an old car door, darkened into that of almost something alive. The yellow, faint at first, grew stronger and brighter. Some strands of purple formed around the peripheral area, giving an edge to things in this place. It was, like the other colors, a thing that did not admit to a source. The deep bright red in an apple needs the apple; if you separate the redness from the apple, there would be no redness. Yet these colors seemed to be the source for themselves. Of what they were a reflection, when there was nothing to reflect in this place, this world?

I am feeling this / this is me. It was a mind; the mind felt no fear with its first words. If fear did exist in this world, it only existed long enough to vanish back into nothingness. It soon became apparent that this world was almost pure energy or emotion or thought. That little, if any of it, was form or matter or what was known as the world in the mind's past life. It had a past life; of that it was certain. But something happened to it and all that was left was this... sensation of heat and color and pressure. It felt hot as well. Yes. A burning too. But not pain. It was like touching ice. That rush that suffused the nerves and jarred the brain when suddenly forced into the afternoon chill of an unusually bright December day, where everything was snow and ice. Where everything glinted like diamond.

The colors, the pressure, all that was the world around the subject (If minds had a center) poured over the point now, and it grew. The petals flared, and the I was happy to exist again, to feel all of these sensations. It didn't know what was happening, or why, or what had become of the world before, but it knew that there was a beginning to this and knew that soon all of this would come to some sort of end. The swirling colors grew darker and pulsed as if it was separate from the rest of the world.

The miasma felt good. The mind, the I, was awash in sensations that reminded it of the other world, the world that was somehow gone. It was like a memory of something special and exciting. But it was different. It was purified. It operated on its own accord, via laws that were from the subject but were not controlled by it.

Sex.

An outside force. I am not alone.

This time the fear did not annihilate itself. It was not a virtual particle. It was real. Palpable. It invaded and cooled the world as jealousy invades and cools the heart. The I did not like the new emotion, this blue thing, but the realization of an outside force caused the mind to recoil nonetheless. The world is not all me. Another directs as I do. I am not alone. The colors crashed together, the ebb and flow stopped. The heat dissipated as the blue mixed in. the pressure relaxed its coils. A darkness seeped in around the edges.

Something happened. A sound reverberated. Soft and melodious, like a memory of a song: "let it happen." The I knew it was not from within. The other. It speaks. The voice –if it had one- was, the mind realized, like itself. It wanted the same thing. To be, to feel what the I was feeling, and that the I was only feeling and seeing and being the world because of the other.

The red, now the soft pink of a flower, darkened. The Petals, frayed and torn, began to mend with the return of the heat. The sensation of ice and heat permeated everywhere. The blue of fear was not completely washed away, but it was soon overwhelmed by the return of everything else and also by the further awareness of what was happening. Since time was not yet conceived or recognized, this happened all at once and never finished happening at all. The act happened as things do when there is no movement of a sun or the rhythmic tempo of the heart with which to measure it.

The point grew again. The petals began to open around it in a blooming cacophony of colors and sensations that pulsed and flowed. The mind, the I, began to understand.

"Yes"

"Yes" the world replied.

The point opened up some more, revealing a form. Recognition. The other. The world began to dissolve. No, not dissolve. It was growing, spreading out. The bright reds and yellows, once all that was to the world, now formed a body. Two bodies. The pressure increased as the subject now understood the predicate. There was more than just it. There was everything else. The point split. There now were two.

The I, now a he, opened his eyes groggily.

He saw her face, silhouetted by the dawn from the window over the bed. His own nakedness was laid bare to hers. The only thing covering them was the heat generated by their dreamy tryst. He felt her breath, warm and inviting, on his lips. Her body was on his. His manhood was deep in her. He momentarily saw her not as another, but as an extension of himself. Or he an extension of her. Her pelvis rubbed against him. A grunt escaped between her lips.

He wanted to say something, to bring this into perspective. A piece of him didn't like this feeling of... he didn't know what exactly. His hands were on her hips. He tried to sit up. Wake up. Figure it out. Shake it all off. But then her nipple was in his mouth and his hands squeezed her ass and his eyes met hers and it no longer mattered. She squeezed him and he squeezed her and before his world was completely absorbed by the ebb and flow of living in a world full of people and cars and real mountains with real trees and real snow he kissed her on her lips, and came with her.

After a while, he spoke. "Wow. No one has ever waked me like that."

"You looked like you were in the middle of a dream, but I couldn't help myself," She said in return. She lazily drew circles on his chest. Her left leg rested between his. He was certain that if she moved it he would get horny all over again.

"I wasn't dreaming" he said. He slowly looked her over. Then he lined himself up against her so that they both lay on their sides, their bodies barely touching. He drew his hand slowly down her side. He felt her body shiver a little. He knew this turned her on. It was doing the same to him.

"I think I was dead to the world." He then took his hand to the small of her back and pulled her toward him. He kissed her again.