Prologue
Cold. That was the first sensation she felt. The dry, frigid shapes of dust and dirt pressed against the side of her cheek. Despite the numbness in her face, it seemed as though she could feel each and every grain that pressed against her. Even those too small to see. An entire world just sitting there beneath her, a world that no one but her would ever know. She lay there for a moment, not thinking anything at all – content.
It was a nice kind of cold.
“I’m outside.” she thought, as she rolled onto her back, her arm brushing against blades of grass, still wet with dew. She opened her eyes. Suddenly, pain shot through her. From every crevace in the depths of her mind, she felt it, like a screeching that pierced her consciousness. It came from somewhere far away, somewhere deep inside her. But it was gone in an instant. Perhaps she had never really felt it. Either way, it didn’t really matter. Nothing did.
As the feeling of that pain faded into hollow memory, her vision began to come back to her. But as her sight returned, the world only seemed to grow darker. Despite the cold touch of air around her, the sounds of her own breathing, the light from the night sky above, there was nothing. No sense of sight, or hearing, or touch, or time. It was as if all her being had become...Emptiness would be the best way to describe it. A complete and utter sense of being alone. No one would find her. No one would call her name. How could they? No one would know she was missing, because no one had ever known she was alive.
She dug her hands into the bare ground beneath her, slowly pulling herself out of the lifeless dirt that, up until just a few minutes ago, she seemed to be very much a part of. Her neck and body were stiff and sore. She felt as if she had been lying there for far too long.
She wanted to run, to get away from this place. To where? Away. Anywhere was better than this place. This place that seemed even more still than death. So she ran. It was hard at first, her legs didn’t want to move. But then they wouldn’t stop, they were taking her further and further away. Maybe too far. Through trees and fields, past stones and hills. None of them familiar. None of them of any comfort. She finally stopped because she was tired – not of running, but because every new sight she saw the same as the rest – meaningless.
She looked up at the sky – stars. Lots of them. Had they been watching her as she slept? She felt that they had. It seemed to her that the stars were crying, wailing because they had lost something very important. It wasn’t a cry that she heard with her ears, but with every essence of her being. In her heart, her blood, her veins. She could feel a horrible sorrow growing within her, and it was reflected in all that was in this world.
It was then that she noticed the moon – it was beautiful, terrifyingly so. And all the stars in the sky seemed to be connected to it in some way, centered around it. It was as though the moon was pulling everything into itself.
And one by one, the stars began to vanish from the sky. In their place was left darkness. It was as if all existence was being swallowed whole. And as the last stars burned away, she felt as though she too had disappeared, some time long, long ago.
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Underneath a crimson night sky, a child was sleeping.
And as she lay there, she dreamt of a world far away. A wonderful place.
In that place was a world with twisted shadows and blinding light.
A space with a sky so endless that it seemed to swallow up all existence.
Strewn from an endless dusk were stars whose hollow flames scorched the sky with sorrow.
And in the center of it all, drifting forever along, was one who watched it all.
And she laid there – the girl, frozen in time.
Sleeping underneath a pale, shrieking, moon.
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