• She waited there. In the night, while the world was wild and beautiful, she waited. She faded behind the veil and wanted to become part of the darkness, hidden; an owl maybe, or more probably a bat. Waiting requires patience, and she wasn’t patient, so she had already destroyed everything around her, so there was nothing to do but cry. Waiting and wandering and wailing, for something she didn’t deserve. But no one deserves anything. Everything is useless. But there, in the distance. The darkness was changing and moving and going backwards, and time caught up with her, and she sighed like she was falling off the edge of the world, which she was really.

And it was his fault, because she need not have waited, not really. Because he had been there all along behind the veil, his own veil, which he refused so hard to pull down. He chose not to see her, and she went mad. But she watched all those years and the seconds when the night changed her eyes were blinded she was gone and his lungs broke and his skin fell off.

• She had been chained in the darkness so as to keep her mind in the dark, I think. Mind you, she could melt into the darkness and make herself stronger. Everything was different, since she had finally let him go. Everything was silent and calm and it drove her mad a little bit, but she didn’t want him anymore. She was happy in the cold and the dark. Everything was cold. Her heart was cold and her mind was cold and her feet were cold, destroying the grass beneath them. Destroying everything, she was. The people, they whispered and stroked her cheeks and made her sob. They stretched her mind and squeezed themselves inside her and made her bruise and cut her. Her blood was purple, indigo blue.

But she was happy.