pathways

Whirling paths deviating off into uncharted destinations.

She stopped and paused, toes curling into the soil beneath her feet. Hands clenching and un-clenching. Unable to remember who she was. The sky above bleeding red onto dry, clumped sand. A barren landscape interrupted only by the occasional burnt husk of a dead fir.

The dirt beneath the flats of her feet was hot with the warmth of the dying sun. Uncomfortably so. Shifting so her heels would not burn was only a temporary reprieve until she put one foot down again, switched it out for the other. No choice but to continue walking, into the distance.

This was a path she couldn't stray from. Denoted by lines of white pebbles, bleached by a million stars and suns, paving the way. They reminded her of seashells on a strand of beach. Except this shoreline did not end, it stretched away into a haze of tangerine, shimmering like a satin curtain.

How long had she walked? Her skin had not burned quite yet, although her hair had grown longer, fairer. She didn't remember what colour it was before. She didn't remember exactly what she looked like, either. Every time she glanced down at herself, a suggestion of something was certainly there, but as soon as she looked away it was gone. Unimportant.

To depart from the path, to step off. The thought glazed across her mind now and again, like one of the birds that would flit across the perpetual setting-sun-sky, gone before she took proper notice.

It was only when she came across the strange form on the horizon that the girl consciously paused. Its crude figure interrupted the monotony of endless dunes of coarse sand. The soles of her feet burning - the intense pain snapping her out of a reverie. She fell from the path, clutching her toes as she tumbled. Into the zig-zag dips of the mounds.

Blinking back tears from her eyes, she looked up at the curved black lump of metal on the horizon. It glinted in the moonlight.

Moonlight? When was the last time she had seen the moon? The stars. Vast sprawling lights hanging above, thousands of pearl-drop lanterns.

She looked down at her emaciated fingers. She was worn through. But a light near that dark hull of a structure, half buried in the sand- if she couldn't reach it she knew she would die soon.

Crawling, climbing, up and down the waves of sand, slipping and rolling- the building grew nearer and nearer. The girl tried to cry out, but her voice failed her. Hoarse from lack of water. She pulled herself along, closer and closer to that otherworldly blue beam. A figure stood up, dark in the lowlight. It came towards her as she finally blacked out.