Running. Bump, bump, bump. Swaying. Then a big jump, a reeling motion, and I’m put atop something else. It moves differently. The back of a sprint-drake, I think. And off we go. Running, running, running, running. I don’t want to. I don’t want to anything anymore.

I should be dead. Maybe, if I pretend, it might come true? Isn’t that how the divine thing is supposed to work? However I see myself, that’s how it’ll be.

I go limp. Now, I’ll be able to die properly, I hope.

But the world keeps moving, whether I like it or not.

Whatever’s happening, it’s outside my control. Listlessly, I let it all happen. I don’t move. Time crawls by at an agonizing pace. Eventually, the nauseating bobbing of the drake beneath me becomes slower, less head-spinningly dizzying. Ah, but I don’t have a head! Haha! Hah…

I puke through my neck-hole. It doesn’t taste like anything, but there’s a vague stinging in my throat from my own stomach acids. I try to puke again to feel something, but nothing comes up.

After what feels like years but was probably only hours, the drake beneath me stops running. Someone grabs me and gently lifts me off, carrying me a short distance before setting me down, leaning my back against what feels like a rock. It scrapes against the brands on my back. It’s painful. But I still don’t move. Can I move? I should be able to move. But I don’t feel like moving. I’m sure that if I only tried, I’d be able to move. That’s how it is.

Even if I don’t need to, I breathe. My chest rises, and I feel the pain of my brands, squeezing me from both the front and back. It hurts. So, after a few breaths, I decide to stop breathing. It’s easy. I just… stop.

A stray wind caresses me. With this much wind, and the coldness of it… I can only assume we’re outside of the city, now. Not to mention the heat of the sun, basking my bare chest. Where am I being taken to? No, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I can’t move. They can’t kill me. So, who cares? There’s nothing left to lose.

I feel myself suddenly shaded from the wind, and the sun is no longer on my chest. A presence moves closer.

A warm hand falls on my chest, followed by the side of someone’s face. Their hair is curly and soft. Then, before I can figure out what they’re trying to do, they abruptly poke my brand, making my chest spasm involuntarily.

Wh—why the heck…?

Since I still can’t move—because there’s no point in moving, not because I actually can’t—I can’t show my unhappiness with their behavior. So, I’m left to wait as they leave me, the only hint that they’re still here being the sudden appearance of a new type of warmth. Like that of a fire. And a few minutes later, the shadow falls across me again, and something warm is put in my open throat. Since I’m no longer breathing, the warm food of indiscernible taste and texture simply slides down into my stomach. After a few spoonfuls, I feel my heart regenerate. But even when it’s back in my chest, it won’t resume beating. I can only assume that since I now no longer have any need for blood, my heart doesn’t need to beat, either.

I’m fed a bit more, my neck heals partway, and then the break ends. I’m heaved back on top of the drake, and off we go once again. Our next stop takes several hours to reach, and when we do, it seems a bit more final than before. Instead of tossing me on their shoulder, they carry me princess-style inside someplace warm and half-stuffy. There, they pause, move up some stairs, and eventually deposit me into a soft, cozy bed.

They pull a blanket over me, and then, I can’t feel them anymore, so I can’t tell if they’re still here.

I’m… alone.

I wonder where Simon went. He was in my eye, but I stomped my eye. Though, it doesn’t feel like he’s gone. Most likely, he’s just hanging around, waiting to return.

But, for now… It’s just me.

Me, and the darkness. The unseeable, the unhearable, untastable, unsmellable darkness.

My body is cold. Even the blanket feels warmer than me. But I have to focus on it. I can’t stand not feeling. It’s all I have left. I can’t even move, but with nothing else, focusing on what I can feel is all I can do. The blanket above me is coarse, and slightly itchy. Its harsh fibers have gotten stuck on my brand. It goes almost all the way up to what’s left of my neck. Below, underneath, is a mattress made with hay, the upper part covered with a thin sheet of fabric for comfort. It doesn’t help much. The hay is uncomfortable and worn, and I can feel subtle movement down there, either from insects, or rats. I don’t know which is worse.

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It’s uncomfortable. But it’s all I have.

Everything else is a nothingness less than darkness. It isn’t the kind of shade you fall asleep in. It isn’t silent. It isn’t even sterile, or tasteless. It’s just an absence of things that are supposed to be there. Even the mattress below me, as uncomfortable as it is, and the blanket on top of me, as itchy as it is, is better. If it’s bad, that at least means that it is.

I can feel my body start to tremble. I want to move. More desperately than I have ever wanted anything else, I want to move. I want to stand up, and dance around, and simply exist. I want to feel wood beneath my toes, or—or maybe grass, and moss, and the cold dew in the morning. Water… Yes, I want to drink water. Cold, delicious water. Water is good. I want to watch flowers, bowing gently, and smell their aroma, feel their gentle petals…

No matter how closely I imagine it, it doesn’t work. It isn’t the same. Whatever I see in my mind is nothing but an imitation.

I… I don’t want this. This isn’t what I wanted.

I never wanted to feel this sort of cold.

I want to be warm, and to feel warm. And to eat good food. Smell nice things, and… I want to see the people I love. Their faces. I can recall them in my mind’s eye only faintly. They don’t really look like that. I hate it. I hate not being able to remember exactly the way they look. The curve of their face, the shape of their nose, the color of their eyes… Did they have large hands, or small ones? Were they warm? Clammy? Dry? Did they hold mine tightly, or with reluctance?

Who were they, really?

Is it too late to get to know them?

The void doesn’t answer me. Its silence isn’t even really silence at all—it’s the lack of anything. There’s nothing there. No one to hear me. No one to care.

There’s only me.

…Do I even know myself?

Who am I, really? Beyond all the likes and dislikes and the things I care nothing for… Who am I? Am I tenacious, or do I give up easily? Do I care for others? Am I selfish? Am I cruel? Am I understanding, or condescending? When did I last make someone cry? Why? How many people have considered me their friend? How many of my classmates hated me the way I always thought they did?

Is the world really the way I think it is?

Is there hope?

My body shivers. The void stretches before me, a deep, unfathomable cavity set within walls of inexistence. It says nothing. There is nothing for it to say.

Only I… can answer these questions.

Which brings one, final, ultimate question.

Who do I want to be?

I want to believe in myself, and others, and a better world. I want to make people laugh. I want to show how much I care. I want to stand strong, even in the face of despair. I want to see myself for who I am, for better and for worse. I want to be honest. I want to accept myself. I want to be someone my mother can be proud of.

I want to have hope.

I want to be a person. Not a bad one, or even a good one. Just… myself. Nothing more, and nothing less.

After all, there’s nothing else I can be.

The darkness yawns open before me, swallowing me in my entirety—and I let it. I don’t struggle. It consumes me, chews me up, and absorbs me into the endless nothingness inside me.

But in the darkness, beneath all the piles and spires of absence, hidden by mounds of nothingness, I find something. A little spark, barely the size of a ladybug. I scoop it into my folded hands, gently, and feel a warmth spreading through me, across me and over me, through the endless nothingness and the apathy, lighting it up with glowing heat.

I open my eyes.

I sit up. Next to me, on a wooden chair, with her body half-leaned onto my bed, is Rice. Her head is covered with her hat, but I can smell the sweat and exhaustion on her. She breathes, gently, in a deep sleep. As I slip out of bed, I remove my blanket and thread it over her, making sure to take off her hat, too. I put it next to her, on the bed.

And then, I wander downstairs. My feet touch cold wooden floors. Creak, creak, creak. The air smells like food. Approaching the kitchen, I find the air becoming warmer. To the left, the door leading outside beckons. I open it, and step outside, into the cool morning air. Below my feet, the wooden doorstep leads into stone steps, and then, grass. There’s a smell of dawn in the air, and the sky is starting to turn pink.

A green forest roils around me. I hear the chatter of drakes in the distance, alongside a rushing stream. The grass in front of me is freckled by flowers. I step through them, slowly at first, feeling the grass tickle the soles of my feet, making sure to avoid the flowers. The ladies. Heh. Heheh. Hahahahahah!

Hahahahahahah!

I speed up, my feet rushing beneath me, longing to feel the touch of new, fresh grass, of the dew soaking my feet. And I run in wild circles, spinning, feeling the dawn sun begin to rise, sending little sunbeams to kiss my face—my face, that I have! My wonderful, perfectly human face! Insects, startled by my advance, fly up to escape.

“Sorry!” I shout to them, in a manic, giggle-breathed voice.

I spin, around and around and around, laughing, chortling, and in the end, I fall to the ground, planting myself square in the wet grass, my hands moving, always moving, to keep feeling the grass, to feel something, and my eyes move across the sky, finding cloud after cloud to interpret. This one’s a hamburger! This one is a wrench! There, a dragon!

I sit back up again, only breathing to laugh, my heart as still as a dead dog in my chest. As I get to my feet, I stumble forward, into a falling lurch, only to catch myself, instead becoming a bow. Before me, a purple flower bobbing gently. “May I have this dance, my lady?” The wind brings a nod to it, and I pluck her, holding her gently between my lips as I begin to dance across the meadow, leaping and running, without rhythm or grace, here, and there, and back and forth, and…

Dance! Lv.2>

Ah, I see—I see! Ain’t that something?

I grin, bark a laugh, and continue dancing, around and around and around and—

I dance right into her arms.

Dizzy, I fall, and she bends to continue holding me in her arms—dipping me like a true Flamenco professional. She blinks down at me, her face so red I can barely see her freckles. “Y—you are alive?”

I smile wildly at her, taking the flower from my mouth, all to say, as happily as a newborn, “And glad to be!”