Thrown

The floor hummed.  It was not a pulse or a throbbing or a vibration, but a hum.  In the stillness I could feel it, see the flicker of the blue inset lines as they zipped out into the darkness in criss-crossing patterns of varying complexity.  The spot I was standing was a nexus of them, seeming to funnel each strand inwards toward my feet.  The lines didn't move besides the flickering, standing perfectly still in the heated darkness.  It wasn't oppressive since the air flowed and eddied around me, but it only carried warmth with it, scentless besides a faint smell of sweat.  My skin was flushed, likely a faint reddish-pink in normal light but showing more of a purple tone in the blue glow.  With nothing else to do, I started walking.

Each barefoot step echoed; off what I couldn't say.  There were no walls, no ceiling, just darkness.  My hands wouldn't reach anything above me when I stretched or jumped, and the light from the floor, bright as it was, didn't reach any hanging object. The floor was flat, in a manner of speaking.  Perhaps it would be best to describe it as a large number of flat, octagonal platforms or pillars that were each slightly different in elevation, sized just larger than my feet.  As I moved, stepping onto the lines that covered the surface of the floor, they began to strobe, breaking past the physical hum. The flash of light, whiter and less blue followed the rhythm of my feet as they echoed along my pathless way.

I wandered through the emptiness until I saw a pinprick of light extending up from the darkness.  Approaching, it grew higher and wider in my sight.  The center was a pillar, octagonal and thick, that sprouted up from the relatively flat ground up into the sky.  Springing off from the trunk at the center were the lines, branching out into the darkness on their own, more intricate than on the ground.  The squiggles and whirls were like flowers and leaves and gnarled branches all in one woven mess.  They pulsed with my steps as well as I strode closer.

I set my hand upon it, the cold blue-grey of the pillar giving way under my skin, crumbling like a dry sandcastle to the touch.  Inside were cords of blue and green and red and yellow, of purple and pink and turquoise.  They twined around each other, a rainbow of wire that throbbed with light as I stretched my hand closer.  The moment I touched them, their color exploded out into the lines of color in flashes, lighting up the landscape all around in prismatic bursts.  There was still no ceiling, no walls, just the ground and the tree.  I became certain this was not a dream.