When you sleep, you do not think. It is a mind empty of the burdens you bear through the day. It is a mind filled with nightmares. There is no way out of the horror that rips her soul to shreds -- not at day, not at night. When she closes her, Caela cannot sleep, and when she opens them, she cannot stay awake. Life is fragile. You can cradle it, cherish it, but it will break regardless. There is always an end. An inevitable end that reduces on to fits. But Caela craves that very. Perhaps then, the nightmares that follow her will cease. She won't make it past twenty, they say. Put her out of her misery before it is too late.  Caela wishes they would, but her mother is too soft to allow such a thing to take place. Even when the villagers whisper, she ignores them.  She is a dead girl, they say. And she is. And this, reader, is a dead girl's tale.