What seemed to be the solid earth was surveyed, and it was discovered to be an island, and not a very large one. It was in fact a very tiny island. It bobbed and swayed and creaked. The thin planks under his feet had never been rock. And the planks were flimsy and began to dissolve. Soon his only support was the foamy film of the ocean’s surface. He flailed and grabbed at the sky and found clouds strangely substantial in his grip. He pulled and kicked and rose upward. But it wasn’t the clouds pulling him upward, it was the day itself. He was swimming into the sky in the clarity of azure. As the sun set, he continued to rise. Gold and purple, green and translucent twilight carried his body outward. But as stars appeared in the firmament and snowflakes sparkled on his skin, he felt the memory of weight and a welcome tug on his body; a descent and the touch of ground under his feet. The earth was there again, founded on an uninterrupted plain, solid, and permanent. And the people standing there beside him on the rock had never left, their feet were planted in this ground, and they had never been wrong.