The girl’s legs are filled with lead, the chill has finally begun to reach her, and her arms hang limply at her sides as she shuffles forward endlessly. Does this land ever change? She wonders. Is it just darkness all the time? Where is the sun? Where are the stars? Where are the lights that used to touch the earth?

The last thought sparks an almost-memory, a flash-image of vast swaths of color and light dancing and swirling above her, coalescing and flickering with music just past what her physical ears can hear. But the sky holds no light at all now. The land below and the dark above is bleak and featureless and though they threaten to freeze on her cheeks, tears form in the girl’s eyes.

I can’t go on like this for much longer. Even now her trembling legs threaten collapse, and gnawing hunger scrapes at her belly. It’s getting hard to tell if her vision is blurring or if it’s just more snow swirling in her face.

But wait.. There on the horizon, a dark wavery line above the edge of the endless gray and white. Is that.. Trees? The girl stumbles and her knee hits sharp ice. Blood seeps out of the wound, stark red against the pale skin and snow and though the pain forces her to cry out, it also serves as another reminder of life, and steels her resolve. I will not die here. I must not.

A second, frustrated voice in her head asks why she must press on so badly. Where is she going? To what end? She pushes the thoughts down, there’s no time for that now. The dark wavy line on the horizon is closer now and yes, they are trees. Dimly her exhausted mind reasons that where there are trees, there is life, and probably people, but all she knows is that they’re the first thing in this dismal land that isn’t stone or ice. 

Like a moth to flame her tired body orients in the direction of that dark line, and presses forth.