The sky was wrong.
It was tilted. Sideways.
Everything was moving, tipping, rolling.
In some distant, vague way, she knew that she was dying. It didn’t feel very upsetting. There was no one to leave behind, after all. No family, no loved ones. Not even close friends. It was tidy. Convenient.
A few faces popped into her mind. Faces she hadn’t seen in a long while. People she wished she could have seen again. But they were all long gone away. She didn’t occupy a space in their thoughts anymore.
The only regret that felt immediate and present, was that he had abandoned her. And she couldn’t find him. It felt like a mockery. Like some cruel, final, brutal joke played by Fate. One more tease, one more desertion. She had run so far, calling for him. Surely, he hadn’t gone of his own will. Trouble must have befallen him, drawn him away from the camp. But the absence of his possessions whispered otherwise. She simply didn’t want to believe it.
She hadn’t seen the edge of the gully in the fuzzy, grey light of foredawn. Her focus was impaired, softened by her panic and confusion.
Somehow, it all felt inevitable. There was no urge to fight, to move her broken body, to cry for help. She had faced down Death too many times in her meager twenty-one years in the world. She was tired of the battle.
The sun was rising. She closed her eyes.
