But she was still alive, strangely enough; still existed, had consciousness. Could Feel the cool air at her fingertips and the moist tears in her eyes and running down her face. She wasn't sad, though desperation begin to pull at her, as if to draw her into a sluggish but powerful whirlpool (of despair/hopelessness? too negative, nihilistic) [that would separate her from what she hoped for]; [the desperation was] the sense of stasis or discontinuity in which one is virtually entrapped in a single state for all eternity. That nothing that one does will provide a fruitful outcome, or lead to anywhere other than ones present place and condition.

She was going Somewhere. Wasn't she? The wind tugged at her, telling her that there was resistance; if there was no resistance then there would be no friction, no force for her to feel. And if there was resistance then there was motion; she was going somewhere, because something was coming from one place and traveling to another, and it held the possibility of taking her along with it.

She had remembered thinking to herself at one point, "I wish that life was not so simple, so logical." Like an easy subroutine that processed itself over and over again, merely changing slightly in variables and sometimes in appearance. Everyone else seemed to not mind it being that simple; they could sit in their oblivion of coffee and alcohol and working and ordinary family life, if they had that much. Her mind cried out like a moist monsoon wind against it; moist because she desired fertility and life, for something to be ever-changing even if it Did remain the same, part of one pattern. Something that could, even while repeating itself over and over, due to its infinite complexity, never seem the same, yet always have the intuitive, aesthetic sense of being exactly as it always was and would never fail to be itself.

And then, soon after, she had somehow arrived here.

(But before,) (So) she (had) shook her head under the warm, bright summer sun and the blue sky that reminded her of sparkling lakes and swinging on the swing set over the green grass. A scene infinite different from this one; that day was warm, calm, bright, and joyful. This place was dark, cold, windy, and mysterious, with the mental equivalent of fluorescent blue flashes in the air, like lightning. Except that she couldn't see them, but knew they were there. Just as she knew, or at least hoped from somewhere very deep in her being, that the other place still existed as well.

She reached out with her arm, closing her hand as if to grasp something, but it closed only upon the wind. She thought that she could see a light in the distance, through the blue cracks and the darkness. It shone like a pinprick or a single star in the sky, only smaller, as though it was the smallest dot that could be visible to the human eye. Instinctively she knew that she must try to reach it, that every other path would lead to dusty rooms filled with boxes of nothing interesting.

So she began to run, moving her legs and making them go through the movements, and she suddenly realized that she was running over a surface, and that it had always been there. She had been standing on something even before she realized it. Reassured that she would not be merely kicking her legs and feet in thin air, she began to move faster. As she ran the dot seemed to jump up and down on what she decided to consider the horizon - merely an arbitrary imagined line in the distance - and she again realized that it was because her body was bobbing up and down as she ran. If she wasn’t moving it at least seemed that she was.

Eventually as she drew closer she realized that the "dot" was a lake, for now she could see the blue waters and the light seeming to float placidly on its surface. All else was darkness, and somehow this lake is light, she thought, because nothing is shining on it to give it light, but I can still see it. And I can see myself, too. Perhaps, then, I am light as well in this place. The water seemed to sigh and heave softly, the liquid forming waves even though she felt no wind. It is moving, she thought, I and it are the only things that move in this place. At least that I’ve found so far. But then, she couldn’t know for sure what the darkness held until she had explored every inch of it. Perhaps there really is something in the darkness.

Because that is why the darkness is so terrifying, and so beautiful; anything can lie within, and there is no limit to what can be found. Why should I be afraid, she wondered, if something terrible were to come out of the darkness? There would be no reason for me to believe otherwise, that it couldn’t. And why should I be so surprised at something wonderful... But something appearing would destroy the possibility. It is just like writing; when I write something, there is no longer a blank page, there is no longer the possibility of anything at all being written on it. I’m afraid that what I write will be worse than the possibilities of what could be written. Sometimes I’d just prefer to let the possibilities exist, rather than write anything. Or a story, when I write, it locks into one possibility. I don’t like that to happen, I like possibility. Why write when I can have a blank page of infinite possibilities? When I think of it that way, it seems better to write nothing.

Through and through the shadows she ran, seeking the dot of light. It seemed to pulse as she blinked, and she feares every time she blinked that it would be gone forever. But she was gone forever, not it. Here, alone, stripped of any context, she no longer existed. It gave her the freedom to do anything. To dance, to sing, to cry. To do nothing.

She could do nothing.

It emptied her of hope. She was a butterfly in a field of nothingness; her wings beat against nothing, her feet not even leaving footprints. There was no ground, no foundation to leave footprints on.

And then she reached it. She paced around the lake, along the lapping of its gentle, bright waters and the ripples that floated lightly over its surface, and found behind the lake, a tower. Low and sleep, smooth and dark, it rose with her gaze (that is, if direction and bearing had any objective significance in this place) to meet what she still thought of as the sky, simply because it was high above her head. ‘Ah-ha,’ she thought, ‘I have found Sometimes. That least it is something’ She pressed her fingers against the cool hard stone, her heart gradually coming to pound more gently n her chest. The surface was cold and smooth, a pleasant coolness which spread through her fingers and up her arms, tingling in her veins. She learned against it, absorbing the comfort he felt from merely touching a concrete, physical object. ‘This is real, it is really real-- I can Touch it.’

‘At least, I believe it is real. At most.’ She turned, an airy note of melancholy, a hint of repressed despair in the whirling of her hair and the sudden twirling of her body. ‘Please tell me it is real’ she whispered, not knowing to whom she directed it. ‘Please make it stay’ instead of disappearing. There must be an entrance, a door that somehow leads to the top.