The view of Lake Champlain is a perfect mandala of colors, the sky mirrored in the rippling silk of the water. A cliche landscape, like the photoshopped kind that come as wallpaper on a brand new computer that still smells metallic and strange. The clouds are too brightly colored, their intensity forcing my eyes into uncomfortable wrinkles of skin. Beyond them lie mountains, odd indigo shapes looming sinisterly against the lightness of the sky. I have an overwhelming desire to dive into the heavy shifting fabric of their peaks, letting the strange navy pigments seep into my skin. But I’m stuck here on the mundane rocky beach, sharp stones digging into my bare feet until dark blood pools in the crevices of their soles. I frantically dip my feet into the glassy surface of the lake, huge rings ricocheting out into the distance as the crimson liquid mixes with the slightly golden water and forms a tangerine orange that looks almost brown in the near darkness. The cold aches at first, but soon my feet settle into the icy wetness with a numb stillness. The glowing red orb of the sun slips beneath the deep blue mountains, seeming to mix with them to form purple for just a split second before disappearing into nothingness. The horizon and water twist together into an inky canvas of nothing, the darkness bringing my eyes comfort after the obnoxious brightness of the setting sun. The sun’s bright shape is still burned into my corneas, ghostly discs floating around the black sky. The stars, winking and glimmering with muted white fire, pop themselves into the inky wash above me, reflecting into the lake and making it look almost polka dotted. As I lift my dripping feet out of the water, they glisten with warm hued moisture that evaporates almost immediately. Blood falls back into the water, clots looking like odd fish swimming about before exiting my line of view. I imagine the bloody fish drifting through the seaweed, hundreds of feet below the pristine surface of the lake. The dance among the sand, sending swirls of sand about in tornadoes of dark dots. The milky way emerges from behind the pin-pricked stars, looking like someone spilled milk on top of the patterned fabric of our vast and quivering universe. I stare at it, overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of everything. Compared to this, I’m a mere bacteria in an unthinkably enormous creature that is our galaxy, which in turn is but one of billions of fish in an endless celestial sea. These thoughts fill my stomach with an unexplainable knot of dread, so I shake the ideas out of my head entirely and turn my focus to the North, where the lights of Burlington wash the sky out just a bit so that it’s a pale and soupy orange color like a rotting pumpkin. The sky looks almost like daytime, though it must be nearly 10 o’clock. My skin begins to prickle, minute hairs dancing in stiff upright positions across my sunburned arms. I turn to go inside, the warm colored light of the house beckoning me into its pine scented interior. I slam the filmy screen door.