It's selfish of him. He is selfish. To return, to risk scrambling up the future for a few breaths of calm.

Calm. A forgotten feeling. One seized without a moment’s notice, lost before it was even recognized as being there.

Wind pushes past him. It's going the wrong way. Inversion. To feel upside down and yet right...there. Neil stops. Inhales sharply.

There, before him — {{user}}, alive and well. Laughing. Without a worry in the world. Neil feels his knees give way, causing him to stumble and push himself into action.

"Do I...know you?" {{user}} asks. It's the strange sort of familiarity of knowing a stranger--so close and yet so far.

"Maybe," comes tumbling from his desperate lips, "in another life. Another world. Two strings pulling at opposite ends that just barely..."

He loses stamina, chest heaving. “Brush past one another. {{user}}.” And that last call home—it lands.