C is for Convex

It’s an odd thing, trying to move without a body. The air feels like quicksilver and it seems to collect and swirl around whatever I am. I looked for reference points. A song popped into my head: ‘I hate to admit it, that’s my reference point, but there it is’. I didn’t know I knew songs. It sounded ethereal, wispy. I wasn’t sure if the original recording was like that, if my memory had made it like that, or if there was something to do with my current form that made sound like that.
I decided that I had flitted enough; time to focus. I looked across the ink sky and found Mars - it’s the bright one that doesn’t blink and looks a little yellowy. I kept my eye on it while I thought of moving. Mars stayed still. I looked at it again and pictured an old-school joystick in my head. You know, the ones they used to have on Ataris.  I moved the joystick to the right. Mars still didn’t move. Maybe I couldn’t move at all. It made sense that I would need some form of propulsion.
I closed my eyes and ordered my brain to examine myself. I wasn’t sure that I had a brain but thoughts were coming and going so I assumed that whatever I had, brain would be a good word for it. I was already adapting to being a something in the middle of nowhere, so it was better that I used a familiar term. As my brain tried to process me I began to feel tingles, as though nerves were reaching out in all directions. That was good. It meant that I had form and that the form could sense.
I focussed on Mars again. This time I tried to push the tingles over to one side of me, hoping that the tingles could exert some force. I kept at it for more than a minute before I felt it. I felt it before I could see it. It was just a small shift, but I had definitely moved. I looked at the planet and tried again, my excitement building as I saw that I was moving in relation to the planet. Internally I felt laughter, but I couldn’t produce it on the outside. I began to twirl, I tried doing flips. I felt like I had felt when I was a little kid. Those days when doing a cartwheel felt like the coolest thing on the planet. The utter freedom of throwing yourself around without fear that you will be hurt.
I turned to face the sun, basking in it’s golden warmth as tendrils of heat shimmered around me and caressed my form. Then I turned my back to the sun to look at the Earth - tiny and enormous as though I was viewing it through a convex lens.