The cold was breathtaking, and the sound of the wind was deafening in my ears. My head was swimming and my vision was blurred, a constant stream of bright light like being on a shadeless snowfield. When my vision finally cleared, just sky. Cold and sharp. Blue and impossibly clear. Had I fallen? My head pounded as I tried to remember what I had been doing.

How did I end up in this strange space of light and sky? What had I been doing before these odd sensations had taken me?

Bits and pieces of memory floated amongst my scrambled thoughts like flotsam and jetsam in a vast endless ocean of blue.

A man, taller than I, dark complexion, bronze and gold eyes set in an angular face surrounded by...a trapper hat? Was he cold? I was cold. This wind was biting through my parka straight to the bone.

Climbing, a seemingly never-ending endeavour through snow and ice and stone. His face again, smiling and laughing as we traversed the steep cliff, choosing our steps carefully. Warmth. Did my heart always flutter when he looked at me like that? Did it always skip a beat when he touched me, steadying my steps as we crossed the steep pass?

But my feet weren’t on the stones now, instead I was almost weightless. Floating. But he had caught me. Hadn’t he caught me? The relief in his eyes as his arms encircled my waist before I had stumbled backwards off the cliff was a memory I would never forget. The terror and the joy entangled in that moment was not going to leave me any time soon.

I reached up, rubbing the windswept tears from my stinging eyes. He had caught me, then why did I feel like I was floating, no, falling. The sky, a cheerful mocking blue as I could feel the panic set in. Just the sky? Where was the mountain?

I tried to move, to see anything but that damned sky. The mountain was yesterday. Yes, that was right. Today, had been the door. The door? A small, plastic and metal door loomed in my peripheral vision. What was a door doing in the sky? What was I doing in the sky!? In my panic, I flailed, arms whipping, the pleasant sensation of floating gone as the reality of falling set in.

It was then that I remembered the man sitting next to me on the aeroplane. Not Him, a different man, angry and drunk from the small bottles the flight attendant had been plying him with. He said he wanted to get out, and he had. Taking me with him.

It was the door, the last thing I remembered before the rush of green and brown had turned everything black.