without choice or wish.

Imagine, you are sitting there, reading a most interesting or frightful or wonderful book, when suddenly, you tumble into it. The book. Yes, head first like Alice down the rabbit hole. Are you prepared to be in the world you suddenly find yourself apart of? No getting used to it, visiting for a bit then backing once again into your own world. No casual beginnings as Lucy had in discovering Narnia through the wardrobe. You're just there, with no warning or preparing for any of it. There's no way for you to know how to get home again or if you even can. What do you do? What's your first plan of action? Do you stand there, blinking slowly, wondering what you ever did to deserve this? Do you not wonder, but just go...to wherever looks best? Do you cry and sniffle, thinking perhaps if you stay in one spot, you'll fly back up and out of the book...except, now that you're here, it seems more like a real world than a book. How do you go escaping from a whole world?! Perhaps, if you jump high enough, wish hard enough, shout long enough....but, no. None of it works, for you are really and truly inside the world that heretofore had only been something imagined.

What comes to life before your eyes? What steps up from the imagined depths to stand before you in flesh and blood? Winged, hideous creatures that would sooner eat you as look at you? Or perhaps, some tiny fairy flits about here and there, asking you to follow where it leads. Do the trees whisper your name or does the ocean sing out a haunting song that can only be heard in this world? Does the sun set in brilliant blues and greens or does the moon shine with a deep purple light?

If I fell into a world, without choice or wish to do so, I would hope it to be far from the reality of the one in which I truly live. I would want to have nice long chats with talking animals or discover the secrets that unicorns hold so close. I would like to learn the song of the sea, swim in it's golden waters and sparkle with starlight when I came out. To ramble through moonshine and discover deep, ancient forests, where the very air is enchanted. Forests so dense, the sunlight is filtered through layer upon layer of leaves, giving all that it touches a soft, emerald glow. If I were in such a place, I imagine the music would float about and around and in me,  a living thing skipping about here and there, back and forth, in and out. And I imagine, after breathing and tasting the air of such a world, returning to my own may become only a distant memory...

If you fell into a world, without choice or wish to do so, what kind of world would it be? For each time we pick up that particular book, we are falling in and engrossing ourselves in all that it is....is it worth it?