You take a yellow happy pellet from the bag, and pop it in your mouth. It tastes really good. The consistency isn’t quite right, but the flavor tastes eerily like your favorite birthday cake when you were a child. You know the one I’m talking about...
As it slides down your esophagus, you feel a warm feeling entering your body. The warm feeling lands squarely in the middle of your stomach, and it grows from there. Suddenly everything around you has a yellow tint to it. The sky is turning from blue, to green, to the most vibrant yellow you’ve ever seen.
You suddenly feel very contented. It’s that sort of sunny feeling you get on especially bright days like the longest day of summer. In your mind’s eye, you can feel the warmth of the Sun entering and penetrating every cell in your body. Then it happens.
Suddenly for no apparent reason, you are ecstatically happy. You can’t even remember the last time you felt this happy. You start giggling, and you find that so funny that you soon begin laughing hysterically. You just can’t stop laughing.
PAUSE
This is an interactive story. On occasion you will be asked to do things to ground your experience in the reality of the world you live in. That said, whenever you see a paragraph enclosed in ***Asterisks**** You are encouraged to do that action for real.
*** Laugh out loud. If you are in public, you may just chuckle to yourself, but if you’re alone, you’re encouraged to laugh as hilariously as you can. Nothing may seem funny at the moment, but that doesn’t matter. Just force it. I promise you’ll feel good afterwards.*****
You’re on the ground now, rolling around you’re laughing so hard. You see a blade of grass. It’s the absolute funniest blade of grass you’ve ever seen. You see a small bird flying overhead. It’s the funniest looking thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.
You laugh for hours, or perhaps just minutes. You can’t tell. Time doesn’t work the same here. When you finally regain composure, you decide that this is perhaps the best of times to start a journey. You look around. There’s a mountain peak in the distance, and in the general direction of the peak, you see a trail that leads off into the woods.
You make your way across the meadow and enter the trail. This path seems to be well worn. Many travelers have passed this way before. For the first hundred feet or so, there’s a wooden handrail that appears to have been constructed a very long time ago.
You follow the path until you are weary. You are now well into the woods. Up ahead, the trees seem to thin out a little bit, off to your level, the ground appears to be going up an incline. You’re curious to see what is at the top of this hill, so you begin to climb it. Half way up, you notice that just off the path there is an opening to a small cave. It seems harmless enough, so you may your way to the cave, and then enter it.