Downward happens faster than upward ever did and the meadow which was wavebody and crowdpulse and soundthroat tilts and spills and she is no longer standing inside it but inside it differently, lowview earthview bladeclose and the grass is not green from this angle but blackgreen dampgreen pressedgreen and each stem is a spine and each spine bends and does not break and the bassline is still somewhere thudthud but it is farther now as if played underwater and she thinks this is only a stumble only gravity being gravity and yet gravity has weight beyond itself and the sky above is cut into strips by bodies leaning in and away and in again and for a moment the world is only breathheat and clothscrape and soilcold against palm.

  The grass receives without comment and the blades lie against her cheek and leave thin wet lines like handwriting she cannot read and something heavy shifts shadowwise and becomes coat and becomes elbow and becomes only dark and the poles she saw earlier—flagpole micstand lightmast—elongate in memory and lean lean closer until they are not poles but listening reeds and the reeds are not touching and yet the air tightens and she hears a laugh that might be hers or someone else’s and the laugh detaches and floats and becomes the rabbitmask grinning from nowhere and everywhere and she thinks this is wrongfilm wrongscene spliceerror and she tries to rise but the ground holds her with ordinary force and ordinary force feels immense.

  A blade slips between collar and skin and the sensation is sharpbright and then there is a different bright lower and lower and she cannot map it because mapping requires distance and distance is gone and the field narrows into small squares of sensation—mudcold kneecap, fabrictear whisperrip, breath too near and too many—and she thinks this is still festival still harmless still only bodies colliding and yet the harmless has thickened and the harmless presses and she cannot see Callum cannot see sky cannot see anything whole and the music fractures into sirensiren not actual siren only highnote slicing and the rabbitmask is no longer on a face but hovering in the gap between two shoulders and then the gap closes and the mask dissolves into rain that has not yet started.

  The earth smells metallicsweet and she tastes iron again though she has bitten nothing and the grass folds under weight and does not spring back and she thinks about earlier when she wondered how long something must be pressed before it forgets and the thought arrives too clear too late and she is aware of her own hands gripping soil and the soil is granular absolute unarguable and the world above reduces to boots passing too close and a flash of light and someone shouting something that disintegrates midair and she tells herself get up get up and the words move slowly as if wading through thickwater and her body answers in fragments not all at once.

  Time does not move forward; it flickers stillframe stillframe jumpcut and in one frame she is on her side and in one frame the grass is a wall and in one frame there is only sky slit between silhouettes and in one frame there is a rabbitlong ear where no ear belongs and then there is nothing distinct at all only compression and then sudden absence and the field lies quiet except for distant bass and her own breath counting itself irregularly and the blades around her are bent and wet and ordinary and the ordinary is unbearable.

  When she sits upright the meadow looks almost the same as before and the crowd is still crowd and the stage still stage and the fence hums faintly at the perimeter and she touches her cheek and finds damp that might be rain that might not and the grass where she lay is darker and she cannot tell if it was always that way and she thinks this is nothing this is nothing this is nothing until the words empty and become only rhythm and the rhythm has no reassurance left in it.