The dark parts that no one sees.

No living thing moves, in this grey winter wonderland.

Jagged rocks protrude from the ground as stalagmites, reaching towards a sky that’s always a different shade of grey. Today the wisps of clouds and stars are gone - it’s just grey swirls against a black background. It looks picturesque, like someone painted a forlorn painting of a misty morning.

Water runs across the ground - deep enough to make your feet wet every time you try to cross, but not fast enough to pull you down. That comes later.

Every so often hail will shatter itself against the ground - lumps of ice, some larger than a watermelon, some containing he frozen corpses of a once living creature.

Nature doesn’t care though, it’s all the same.

No living plant grows here, either. Even moss would be welcome - company in this desolate wasteland. A pack of starving wolves, a vulture against the horizon - these appear in brief shadows, but are then gone. Not much lasts here, in this winter wonderland.

Some way in, surrounded by broken thorns, sharpened rocks, and teeth from long forgotten nightmares, sits a girl.

She’s young, maybe seven or eight. There is the telltale red raw mark of chains that have only just been removed, stark against he dark grey nightmares that chain her to the ground.

The ground around her is littered with bones, the only colour in this broken world forming around her - specks of dried maroon that dot the rocks, blood from battles that were fought a long time ago. Blood from battles that are still being fought.

Dried tears cover her face, her eyes dead. Sometimes they have a glimmer of life, a spark of fire, but today it is all gone. Nothing lies in those brown eyes. Nothing human, nothing inhuman.

You could nod to her, you could smile at her, you could wave - but despite the internal reaction that occurs, none of these will get you any external recognition.

Maybe you don’t see it. Maybe you see a field of trees instead, bright and vibrant with colour, and she’s just sitting in the middle, looking despondently lost despite all that’s around her.

Sometimes she may join you, sometimes she may not. And in those moments you may look into her eyes and see a glimpse of that wasteland - of the girl that fights and loses within, and wonder how someone could ever survive like that. But it’s gone before you know it, and there’s a smile on her face that only reaches her eyes through years of training, and she’s off, running through the wind.

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Definitely haven't done it justice, but that's a glimpse into the repressed bits of my mind.