(This post is a little backdated, I got distracted from writing. This happens after Eric gets back from the surrounding, before he meets Jett)

Eric sat on the side of the road, his back nestled somewhat uncomfortably against a warm concrete wall. His guitar case was open in front of him, and his guitar was in his lap. From where he was sitting, he could see a grand total of 47 cents in the case from charitable passer-byes. Pity money, and Eric knew it, he couldn’t get a good note out today.

It wasn’t that he was in a bad mood or tired; Eric had plenty of energy and was happy to be alive. He just couldn’t get his head around what had happened. Had it all been a dream? Seemed real enough, but then again, he had been in space talking to Sushi people.

“If only I’d had a camera phone…”

He sighed, striking an E note and thinking about everything that had happened. It had been beautiful out there, if also terrifying.

“Walking on a rainbow road…”

He found a chord that went well with those words. Someone stopped to listen.

“Walking on a rainbow road! Trying to find my way back home cause I’ve been, walking on a rainbow road.”

That actually worked well enough. His audience of one was still watching him, so it was sink or swim.

“Looking for my pot of gold. Gotta find it ‘fore I get too old…”

He panicked silently for a moment. What the hell was he going to say now?!? He’s gotten off topic, trying to turn the rainbow road into a metaphor for something, and now he didn’t know where to go with what he was saying. He had to bring it back to what had actually happened.

“And then I got attacked by a giant space whale!”

And as quickly as it had formed, his tiny audience dispersed. Eric sighed, putting his guitar down and picking up a notebook, marking down the lyrics that had worked under “needs improvement.” He left out the bit about the space whale.

He looked up for a moment, watching the city go on around him. Even now, it was hard to him to believe he’d ever actually left. That all of this had been going on the whole time, and he’d just stepped out for a minute. The whole affair seemed like a storyline from a movie, he often had to remind himself it had even happened.

And what had it all amounted to? Eric watched a businesswoman pass him by, all prim and proper. She gave him a look of disgust when she noticed him, and he just smiled. She didn’t know he had been to space. She didn’t know he had fought space whales and met sushi people. She didn’t know he had died. All she saw was a bum sitting on the side of the road.

He shook his head and picked up his guitar. After all that had happened, and nothing, nothing whatsoever had come out of it. Not even a fully formed memory.

“Walking on a rainbow road…”