My ascension is slow.  I no longer feel the heat below so much as smell it.  The sickly sweet smell of humanity, or at least what I remember as humanity, cooks underneath with each lugubrious step.  I look down.  Where three toes once proudly protruded has become a pointed, bony trio.  Each clacking step echoing upon itself as my three ivory colleagues desperately try to pull me forward.

            The lack of concern over the loss of something so integral spurs my realization I have only vague perceptions of what it means to be.  The interior emotions I once held, the realization and compassion, not only for self, but those around me, are gone. 

            I stare at my feet and concentrate, wanting badly to feel something.  Pain is now a constant.  As easily as one would exhale, my being is riddled with pain.  I relish it now, as a reminder I am still somewhere. 

            A sensation from somewhere inside, a place I forgot existed, grabbed my consciousness and screams “feel.”  I pause.  The monikers once common to me, those pieces of being separating me from the base, unfeeling inhabitants around me, yell in unison.  One, louder than the other, tickles the back of my ear.  Loss. 

            A flame, lit upon a wick struggling to keep a flame, warms my inside.  A single tear falls, but evaporates halfway down.  I feel something.  Looking down, the partial loss of foot reminds me of nothing.  What is it? 

            A voice booms from the corridor above me, “see.”  I know what it is I feel.  I know what I long for.  I miss company.