Fire. Fire up her calves and stabbing, scraping pain at the bottom of the foot, as though all her flesh was being diced into bloody meat mush. She tried to scream but could not scream, and tried to push herself up with one arm, leaning against the wall, so that she could stagger back to the bed, but in doing so she took another step and the pain seared through her legs, leaving her gasping for breath.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

THUNK!

The golden haired girl tried to rush to her rescue, but tripped on her own hair. As she struggled back up her hair tangled around one knee and an elbow, and she fell and fell again.

THUNK! THUMP!

“Oww…”

Now two girls were on the floor, and it would have been funny but she was in too much pain to laugh. Gingerly, on all fours, she tried crawling a short distance, and to her great relief found that crawling did not elicit the burning pain in her legs and feet. At least she could crawl.

Cold stone. Bare skin. Hair. Hair everywhere, on her hands, on her body, on the bed, sunlight spilling through the windows to reflect a golden sheen. Soft sobs, the sobs of her companion, shoulders shaking, trembling… she crawled towards her, dragging herself across the floor delicately, careful to avoid even brushing the rough stone floor with the soles of her feet. When she finally reached the small, trembling figure, she pulled herself upright and hugged her around the shoulders, resting her head on bare, warm skin.

“Hey,” she wanted to say, but couldn’t, so instead she took her companion by the chin and gently raised her tear-stained face. The tears dripped down her hands and ran down along the right side of the cocooned hair and into the floorboards beneath her thigh, where they turned a corner and ran along the smallest crack, stopping at the center of the room to form a small, shimmering pool of tears.

She had a million questions to ask, but now was not the time. “It’s okay,” she wanted to say, but could not say that either, nor “we’ll make it out of here together,” or “why are you crying?”, so instead she took ahold of her companion’s face and kissed her. As she did so a potent, fiery wine flowed into her mouth, swirling past her tongue and filling her throat, and she broke away from the kiss and licked her lips, the taste heady and sweet.

The sobs subsided, slowly, one at a time, and her companion began to speak haltingly.

“Th-there…”

“There a-are…”

She took her companion’s hand. They grasped each other, nails digging into the back of one another's skin. She threw her companion’s hand over her shoulder and took a step, and only when the electric shock went through her foot did she realize something.

Her foot did not hurt anywhere where it had touched her companion’s tears.

“There are no doors in this room…”