[Issue 2026.76]

“Break Free This Ground”, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Art © 2026 Sebastian Timpe

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You’re not alive just now, wrapped in soil and silence. The ground holds you through this current death, while you quietly rage. Let me go! you tell the ground. I don’t want to be here.

This time, you broke when you leapt from a precipice and your paper wings failed. You were trying to touch the stars.

I wish you’d take more care, the ground says. Its reproach is meant kindly. You won’t mend forever.

The rains have left the ground rich with worms and bacteria. Your flesh breaks down quickly, lovingly eaten away until it’s just your cracked bones cushioned in soil. These bones, too, will fade until only the ground remembers your former shape.

However you die, the ground is always there. In the sea, deep below currents untouched by the sun. In the mountains, with icy shawls swaddling pointed shoulders. Under the rainforest canopies where ants carpet the soil and toucans whoop in the branches.

In the stars, you think, you can expand, breathe, and be yourself. There is no ground in the void.

What if I don’t want to mend? you snap. You’re reshaping yourself, gathering your strength for the rebirth and another chance.

You belong here, the ground says. You are made of earth. Earth is what you are meant to be.

You’re too angry to talk to the ground any longer.

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When you wake and taste the air, people are building vehicles to the stars: rocket ships that will break the sky and bring heaven nearer. It’s exhilarating. You strive to be one of the first astronauts in space. This is your opportunity.

Instead, you die in an alleyway, walking home from a second job, the rejection letter for the space program burning in your pocket.

Even in a city, the ground is there.

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Stay, the ground says.

You fiercely ignore it as your coffin rots.

Why do you do this? the ground asks, confused as you tunnel your way back to the surface.

You don’t answer the ground.

You spit soil from remade lips and wipe the dirt from your eyes.

This time, you tell yourself, you’ll find a way to fly.

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You remember the first time you realized you do not belong to the earth. You were very young, then. Just a frightened sapling, trying to stretch past your roots and fly. You reached and struggled and didn’t understand why the earth held you in place and demanded you remain a part of it.

You were born of soil, yet in truth you are sky. The ground is heavy, and it’s fine for those who want to be earth, but you are not one of them. This is what the ground doesn’t understand.

You tried to tell the ground once: I need air. I am air.

No, the ground argued, you are not. Do not hurt yourself believing lies.

Your heart is not a lie.

Is it?

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The cliffs are smaller now. Worn away by wind and rain. Returned to the ground from whence they came. The cliffs are happy; they never complain.

You walk along a cracked road to see where the world has turned since you last saw it. Everything is dry and cracked, blistering heat and gutted fields. It’s hard to find water, and harder to find air.

Still, you journey on, across the barren landscape. You have a plan this time. There are rumors of a mountain so high, it kisses the very lips of space. You can climb that mountain, and up there, in the thinning atmosphere, a thousand miles from the ground, you can leap into the sky: free as air.

A dust storm whirls from torn-up plains and swallows you, choking you in unnatural darkness, and the sky doesn’t hear you scream.

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There is not much of you left, the ground says solemnly.

You curl in on yourself, waiting for your molecules to gather mass so you can push yourself up. Climb out of this current grave and try… again. Again. How many times now?

You are so tired, stretched so thin—you wonder if you will ever reach the sky. Can the ground be right? Have you lied to yourself all this time, believing you are air when your cells are earth?

The thoughts scrape and gnaw, so painful you want to keep screaming to drown them out, but even that rage is too weak to sustain. You wonder if giving up, staying forever in the ground, will be easier. You don’t have much left.

And then…

Hello? whispers a voice you’ve never heard before. It sounds like you, only smaller, younger, and more afraid. Can anyone hear me?

Who’s there? you ask.

I’m stuck, the little voice replies, quavering.

The ground rumbles. Leave this to me. You rest.

Hello? I don’t know what to do, the little voice says, and though you could ignore it, there is something so familiar in that plea. Will someone help?

Hold on, you say, and dig your way slowly, painfully, through the earth towards the new voice.

Leave be, the ground orders. This is not your concern. You need rest.

You refuse to heed. This new voice is scared, and you remember how it is to be scared and alone and confused.

And then you find them.

They are tiny, raw after a first death. Though your forms are different—yours is tough and scarred, stronger than you remember from how hard you’ve always fought to escape; this small-one is vulnerable and glowing with fervor and hope—you recognize something you share: this small-one, too, is truly air.

Oh, the small-one says in wonder as you reach a hand and touch their fingers. Oh! Are you like me?

Yes, you say, and you wrap yourself protectively around the small-one.

Do not plant lies in their mind, the ground says, and it is angry at you now. You will only confuse them. They are earth, as are you.

No, you say. We are not earth.

The small-one gasps, tasting a new word for themself, a word that speaks to who they are. A true word.

Yes, the small-one says, clasping your hand. I’m sky.

And I am air.

Both your hearts are true.

Come on, you tell the small sky. Let’s go home.

It will be a long road, a grueling one, maybe, because the ground is vast and unyielding. But the sky and the air are equal in might. Together, you will thrive as who you are. You will live, and you will fly.

Together, you and the small sky begin digging upward, shedding dirt and shaking off the lies the ground has always told you.

A version of this story was first published as a Twitter thread in 2019.

© 2026 Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

[Issue 2026.76]

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