"And no one thought you'd make it past the morning."

She tried to understand. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, tight until white spots appeared behind her eyelids, her fists closed so that her nails made indents on the fragile skin of her palm, she tried to understand. How things had gone so wrong, and so quickly.

Her entire world had swayed beneath her feet and settled into an entirely foreign landscape, the usual smooth soil under her feet now turned into jagged rocks that cut into the soles of her feet, large, jutting cliffs towering around and above her, obscuring the morning sun from view. They were indifferent to her pleas and sorrow, these unyielding rocks with their tall, pointy faces. She could not believe that they came from the same earth that had held her body so gently before, its wind whispering to her as she walked its large, sloping hills, its tall grasses tickling her as she basked in the warmth of its sunlit days. What had happened to cause those sloping hills, that whispering wind and those tall grasses to disappear? What had she done?

She walked this new landscape hesitantly, unexpectedly cutting herself on bits of rock just as she thought was was relatively safe. Sharp leafless branches swung in a cold and uncaring wind, catching on her clothes and scratching at her face. Her hair became tangled in their clawing fingers, and as she struggled to free herself, she only became more entangled, a struggling fly in a sticky, man made trap -- innocent and hopeless.

She was trapped. Alone and scared, she fell to the cold ground, folding her body together as protection against the biting wind, the slapping branches and the cold, leering faces of the looming rocks. She could not understand this jarring change, this abrupt and cruel abandonment. She could not understand why the things that had once held her and accepted her had turned so ugly, so unfeeling and so unaffected by the sound of her voice, which cracked under the weight of her misery.

This once bright world that she come to know and love, that she felt like she had known so well, had disappeared entirely. And as she laid her head down against this uncaring rock, she closed her eyes and spread her fingers wide, imagining that she was running them through those soft, long grasses one last time before she finally disappeared.