Norman felt as though he had been falling for days. Years, even. In fact it had been only twelve seconds since he'd fallen out of the airplane, but everything prior to that event now seemed like a distant memory, like another life. He tried to remember how he had fallen, but the memory was dim. He experienced a moment's uncertainty. Had he really ever been on an airplane? Had he lived a life before this fall? He wasn't sure. Perhaps he was born here, hundreds of feet above the earth, free falling with the atmosphere stinging his eyes and howling in his ears.

No, he was quite sure he remembered a life before this fall, a time when his feet were firmly pressed against the solid ground. There was plain evidence, too. Where, for instance, did he get this hacksaw, the one he was busily using to saw his own leg off? There were no hacksaws here in the upper atmosphere. He must have obtained it before the fall.

Then there was the matter of his clothes and hair, which were on fire. Norman didn't think things simply burst into flames without some rational cause, and there were no matches or kindling up here. He knew he'd never been hit by lightning; he would certainly have remembered THAT. After all, getting struck by a lightning bolt is (in general) a most improbable event.

Norman took a deep, cold breath and continued sawing. So it's settled, he thought. This is not my regular habitat. I am normally an earthbound creature, and therefore my position at this altitude must be the result of a relatively recent turn of events, ancient though the memory feels. It involved an airplane, I definitely recall an airplane. In fact, now that I think about it, I must have fallen from that verysame airplane not more than half a minute ago! My, but how the mind's sense of time plays tricks.

Norman looked down and forced his eyes to see despite the icy wind. Judging by my apparent distance to the ground, he reflected rationally, and by it's current rate of approach, I would say the period of my life that I've spend up here in free fall is destined to soon end. He sighed sadly, wondering whether he would ever be able to accustom himself to a life not spend hundreds of thousands of feet in the air. He felt at home here. The noisy wind was like an old friend, and he told it so.

"I'll miss you, old friend."

He paused in his sawing. The hacksaw seemed to have cut most of the way through his right femur, and there was a lot of blood spilling out. Frankly, it hurt like hell, and Norman wondered whether it was really worth it to keep on sawing. He even doubted the wisdom of undertaking the amputation in the first place, though he couldn't remember why he had made the decision to do it. Perhaps he had made the decision while still on board the airplane. It hardly seemed to matter now.

He glanced down at the ground again. It was quite a lot closer this time. Clearly, the rate of his descent was accelerating faster than his train of thought. He considered panicking, but figured why bother. Everything will probably sort itself out eventually. With an Oh-What-The-Heck shrug, he resumed sawing his leg and even began whistling a cheerful tune, when suddenly an enormous cougar fell upon him, dug its claws into his burning flesh, and seized his throat in its maw.

Now this was an interesting development, thought Norman. This cougar wasn't here a moment ago, and it definitely arrived from above me. Perhaps it was falling too, from some greater altitude (thus explaining its higher velocity at the time we collided).

He would never know for sure, because at that moment Norman felt a sharp impact against his back, jolting his entire body. His breath was knocked out, and in that moment he knew he had landed. He had survived, evidently. Or was this afterlife? It was a plausible notion, given his surroundings. He was encircled by a dark wall of natural rock, and was rapidly sinking into a pit of molten lava. The bright open sky was visible above him, his old home. Ah, how he missed the sky! He would have to return someday, to visit his old haunts and relive the sweet memories of free-fall. Fond old days of hacksaws and burning hair and cougars. Those were better days. He let a nostalgic tear fall from his face into the lava, where it instantly evaporated.

The molten rock was very near to covering his face. Norman strained his eyes in the searing heat, trying to get a grip on things. His friend the cougar had been knocked to the opposite end of the caldera, and now only its tail was visible, sticking up out of the lava. Hmmm, thought Norman, something seems odd about this entire situation, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I just survived a four-mile fall into an open volcano, so why didn't that big cat make it?

A thoughtful look crept over Norman's face (or rather his eyes, since his nose and mouth were already submerged). All his life, he had made an unconscious assumption that events were subject to a set of consistent laws, or at least tended to follow predictable courses and patterns. But the past few minutes (or however long it had been since his fall) clearly defied much of what he took for granted. Very well, he thought. Two can play at that game.

He focused his one exposed eye on the cougar's tail, flexed his willpower, and transformed it into a daffodil. The lava covered his face, swallowed him, and transformed into a grassy meadow.