HezhenHarmonics
Short Stories by Skylar
Entry #83641: Keonapaid or human?
Entry #1734: Mavia (name)*: Derived from the Arabic Mawia, signifying “mirror” or “pure water,” often metaphorically linked to the untainted essence of nature and the introspective habit of human consciousness.
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Mavia looked down at herself. She has transformed completely into a human. Her form was slight, and she was clothed in dark pants and a blue T-shirt. Her skin had a softness that felt strange to her. She could feel the textures of wind brushing against her face, the rough ground beneath her feet. Senses, she thought. Everything here was louder, sharper, more vivid.
“Are you lost?” It was a human voice, gentle but curious. Mavia turned to a youthful face like hers, her smile inviting and warm like sunlight breaking through clouds, uplifting the first breath of spring air.
Mavia felt her heart beating for reasons she couldn’t yet comprehend. She looked back at the eyes gazing at her, deep, dark brown pools brimming with beauty and care. A sweetness hung in the air as she approached, subtle yet profound, as though it had quietly reshaped a corner of her world.
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Entry #202478: Kenopsia (noun)*: A term describing the hauntingly desolate ambiance of a once-vibrant place, now devoid of its activity and inhabitants.
Mavia was a Kenopaid. The Kenopaid are part of one collective consciousness woven from the vast knowledge bank on her home planet. The knowledge bank was the heart of Kenopaid existence — a towering, cylindrical structure with a clear and glassy surface, filled with the planet’s water, swirling in layers from deep black to shimmering silver. In some places, the water fell in sheets so thin that Kenopaids would often drift straight into the glass walls.
The Kenopaids called Earth, PL-3501, following a naming system that marked it as the first planet with life in the 35th galaxy they had cataloged. Before Mavia landed on Earth, she thought it was the same as any entry in their collective records, not knowing how her life would be intertwined with the ones on the little planet. Each Kenopaid shared access to a common accumulated data, an endless archive of discoveries and analyses, which meant that Mavia knew this planet without even touching its soils, oceans, or seeing it by eye. PL-3501’s status as a “planet with life” was ordinary, a tiny star in the galaxy of Kenopaid knowledge. They recorded facts and details, then moved on, with little sense of attachment or curiosity. Maybe that’s why, despite knowing thousands of other living species in the universe, they never considered connecting with others. Connection, after all, was a foreign concept in the Kenopaidic language.
There was a phenomenon common to Kenopaids that Mavia is now scared to think of — Kenopaids would disappear from the planet every once in a while without any signs of warning. When a Kenopaid vanishes, they are replaced by a new Kenopaid generated by the knowledge bank without ceremony or mourning. No Kenopaid is particularly attached to another. Their existence is like a particle of sand in comparison to their vast knowledge bank, and their absence is a stone slipping into the water — only the faintest of ripples.
The day Mavia disappeared was like any other. No warnings or farewells, signals, or rituals marked the moment. One instant, she was there, moving through the glistering corridors of the knowledge bank, and the next, a sensation, unlike anything she had known of swept off her — a pull, like an invisible hand lifting her from the ground, drawing her toward an unknown.
Mavia didn’t know if it was death, transformation, or a mere recalibration of her purpose. Kenopaids did not have words for emotions as humans do, but if she had to name it, Mavia felt something close to calm. Disappearances were common among Kenopaids; she had seen others disappear right in front of her, replaced by newly generated Kenopaids seamlessly as if no absence had ever existed. She had assumed the same would happen to her one day —- a dissolving into nothingness, a return to the knowledge pool. There was no fear, for fear was simply unnecessary, and neither curiosity nor excitement, for Kenopaids, did not look forward or back, their eyes locked on the pursuit of knowledge.
But somewhere, in the quiet recess of her mind, a faint question lingered: Will I reappear, or will I dissolve?
Mavia didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know if she would open her eyes in some new place or cease her existence entirely, slipping away without leaving a trace. She had no concept of what “death” might mean; there were no recorded memories of reappearing after the disappearance, no accounts of the sensation beyond what she felt herself. As her form flickered and dissipated, she let herself sink into the sensation. Her final thought before the world completely changed was a small detached curiosity: If I disappear forever, will it even matter?
Then, in an instant, she was no longer in the shimmering hallways built by the Kenopaids. She found herself standing on solid ground again, surrounded by noise, color, and sensations sharper than anything she had ever known.
Instinctively, Mavia tried to connect the knowledge bank, to draw upon the familiar source of information that had always been her guide. But instead of the sharp clarity she was used to, her mind met only static, a dull hum of science. Her last connection left of at the recognition that she was now on PL-3501 and that she was, for the first time, a single mind independent from the great pool of Kenopaidic knowledge.
This realization was disturbing yet exciting. Would she ever be able to connect to her homeland? But does that matter anymore? Mavia looked down at herself. She has transformed completely into a human. Her form was slight, and she was clothed in dark pants and a blue T-shirt. Her skin had a softness that felt strange to her. She could feel the textures of wind brushing against her face, the rough ground beneath her feet. Senses, she thought. Everything here was louder, sharper, more vivid.
Mavia was once a Kenopaid.
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Entry #179980: Name(noun)*: A word or combination of words by which an entity is designated, identified, or known; a marker of existence and individuality.
“Are you lost?” It was a human voice, gentle but curious. Mavia turned to a youthful face like hers, her smile inviting and warm like sunlight breaking through clouds, uplifting the first breath of spring air.
Mavia felt her heart beating for reasons she couldn’t yet comprehend.
From the hazy recesses of the knowledge bank, she recalled the expression – a sterile entry filed under emotional responses. Yet she had never truly understood what a smile looked like, let alone what it felt like to receive one. She looked back at the eyes gazing at her, deep, dark brown pools brimming with beauty and care. A sweetness hung in the air as she approached, subtle yet profound, as though it had quietly reshaped a corner of her world.
Mavia tried to mimic her expression, pulling her lips into an arc. As she felt those foreign muscles on her face, her heartbeat quickened, a faint heat rising to her cheeks.
“Yes,” Mavia replied, a little hesitant. The single word hung in the air as she grabbed it with a strange rhythm in her chest. It wasn’t just the act of smiling; it was something deeper. A subtle, almost imperceptible thud took over her, the unmistakable pulse of her heartbeats as human.
“You must be new here. What’s your name?” she asked, extending her hand. Mavia stared at the hand, realizing only after a pause that she was supposed to take it.
This question provoked more memories of entries about humans. They used names as identifiers, symbols of individuality — a curious habit; all Kenopaids shared the same core of knowledge, so there was no need to differentiate.
“Mavia,” she said, letting the sound of her name settle between them. She felt the strange texture of another human’s hand touching her unfamiliar skin, and a sense of warmth and electricity ran through her veins.
The girl, who introduced herself as Sarah, took Mavia under her wing in the days that followed, guiding her through the strange and seemingly illogical world of human social life. Mavia observed with a quiet intensity, noting how people adjusted their expressions, tones, and even their postures depending on whom they were with. They exchanged phrases like “please” and “thank you,” which seemed unnecessary to Mavia, like wrapping thoughts in layers of padding before presenting them. As days passed, Mavia felt her connection and memory with the knowledge bank fainter than ever.
One day, Sarah asked Mavia about herself — her past, and her dreams. The way Sarah approached the questions, so gentle and curious, felt like a flower blooming in Mavia’s heart. Yet Mavia hesitated, unsure how to explain something so fundamental and alien: She had no “past” or “dreams” in the way humans understood them.
Keonapaids didn’t yearn or aspire; they simply were.
Caught in the strangeness of the moment, Mavia answered with a question, “Why do you need to know what others think of you?” Her voice steady but curious, her head tilted as if to bridge the unspoken gap between their worlds.
Sarah looked at her, surprised. “It’s just... people want to feel liked, to fit in.”
“Why?” Mavia pressed, genuinely curious. “Does it change anything about who you are?”
Sarah paused as if caught off guard by the question. “I guess... it’s hard to explain. You don’t want to be left out. It makes life feel... better.”
Mavia pondered this, watching how people worked so hard to fit themselves into these invisible shapes. It struck her as exhausting — so many invisible rules to follow, so many expressions to maintain. It seemed to her that they spent more energy on trying to be something than simply being.
From time to time, Sarah would talk to Mavia about her parents’ fights, how their voices rose, faces flushed, hands gesturing wildly, each one trying to overpower the other with louder, sharper words. And yet, after all that, they walk away to different rooms without resolution, their resentment simmering, unresolved.
Mavia, bewildered, asked Sarah, “Why didn’t they just say exactly what they wanted? Wouldn’t it have ended faster?”
Sarah laughed, though her expression was one of pity. “It’s not that simple. People don’t always want to be honest. Sometimes they don’t even know what they want.”
To Mavia, this was perhaps the strangest realization yet. Humans seemed to carry entire worlds within themselves, layers of desires and fears that they hid or revealed, depending on who was watching. They seemed to move through life both drawn to and burdened by each other, tangled in expectations and insecurities.
On quiet evenings, when she and Sarah sat watching the sunset, Mavia often found herself gazing at the sky, her mind drifting back to the vast, quiet expanses of her home planet. There, everything was clear, connected, and serene. Here, on PL-3501, the world was a tangled, chaotic web, full of beings endlessly circling each other, each searching for something they couldn’t quite name.
On a crisp autumn night, as the sky deepened into rich indigo, specked with the first glimmers of starlight, Mavia and Sarah sat side by side on the swings of a playground in town. There is an eerie silence around them, a stark contrast to the boisterous laughter and chaotic energy that filled the space during the day. Now, the once-familiar playground seemed almost otherworldly, as if holding its breath in the quiet night. Yet, amidst the stillness, Mavia and Sarah felt a serene peace in each other’s presence, their breaths lit a gentle light against the night’s shadows.
Mavia turned to Sarah and asked, “Do you think humans could ever be happy if they just... existed, without worrying about how others see them?”
Sarah looked at her, a shadow of thought passing over her face. “Maybe we would! We’re always taught not to care too much about what other people think. But... I don’t know… I think if we don’t care at all, we would be lonely, too.”
Drifting into her own thoughts, she fell silent.
Mavia turned and looked into Sarah’s eyes, glistening under the fading sun. Her green irises, touched by the golden hues of the sunset, seemed to hold entire worlds within them. As Mavia gazed deeper, Sarah’s dark pupil reminded her of her own mother planet, vast and unknowable, filled with mystery. A strange, unspeakable emotion rose within her — a quiet ache, a desire for this moment to stretch on forever.
Though she had once thought caring about others’ perceptions inefficient, Mavia was beginning to understand that caring for others might be essential. Perhaps caring so much about others is not completely a bad thing. Humans are more connected than she’d realized, not by shared knowledge or purpose but by an invisible thread of need and longing. They were, in their own way, tangled together, even if the connections were messy and imperfect.
But she was pulled back from her thoughts by the irrational pulse of her heart. She has been looking at Sarah's side profile for a while. She delineates her eyes, nose, and lips with her sight, realizing how perfect she is. The lashes are like wings of butterflies fluttering as she blinks, and her lips like flower petals, dark but alluring in the dim lighting of the dusk.
For the first time, Mavia realized the perfection in human imperfection — a chaotic beauty that no amount of logic or knowledge could ever replicate. Maybe I’m becoming a human, she thought quietly, her mind lingering on the taste of Sarah’s rosy, petal-soft lips.
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Unknown Entry ####: Love (noun/verb)*: The silent pulse of connection that thrives in spaces between words, an ineffable force that transcends logic.
The Eternal Winter of Qinyi
惟孝顺父母，可以解忧。——孟子
Filial piety is the only way to alleviate worries. — Mencius
Qinyi was a town of snow and silence. The streets were blanketed in white, the rooftops glistening under a pale, unyielding sky. The snow never melted, and the air was always cold, as if time itself had frozen. In Qinyi, peace reigned, and its people without worries.
Filiality is the only way to alleviate worries.
The mantra wasn’t just a rule; it was the law. Obedience to parents and elders was the cornerstone of society, a value taught from birth and upheld with rigid enforcement. In Qinyi, rebellion wasn’t just a sin—it was a threat to the fragile harmony. The eternal winter was a punishment to the town because of their ancestors' disobedience. Only by staying true to filiality can they be free of worries and continue their peaceful life. It is believed that if everyone practices filiality to the extreme full heartedly, the snow will be melted.
Lian Zhou was a figure of legend in Qinyi. As a young girl, her name was Lian Yang before, she had been the perfect daughter. Her obedience to her parents was celebrated in songs and stories, the most famous of which involved the winter of her fifteenth birthday.
That year, her mother had craved hot fish soup during the coldest week of the season. The rivers were frozen solid, and the markets had been emptied by a storm. Yet Lian had not hesitated. She knelt by the frozen pond outside their home, using her body’s warmth to melt the ice. After hours of painstaking work, her fingers blue with frostbite, she caught a fish with her bare hands and brought it home.
The story of Lian’s sacrifice spread throughout Qinyi, making her a symbol of filial piety. She became the model citizen, the standard against which all children were measured.
She was married into the wealthy Zhou family because of her good reputation, and changed her name to Lian Zhou.
But behind the admiration, Lian carried a quiet bitterness. Her sacrifice had earned her respect, but it had also shaped her into someone unyielding, someone who demanded the same level of obedience she had once given.
By the time she had her own family, Lian’s devotion to filiality had hardened into something close to tyranny. Her four sons were quiet and submissive, anticipating her every command. She has taught them to protect her family’s honor through an iron fist.
Though her daughter, Mei, was another story.
At 18, Mei was everything Lian had been taught to fear. Where Lian was cold and calculating, Mei burned with passion and defiance. She had a way of questioning that unsettled Lian, a way of looking at the world as if it could be bent to her will.
Lian needs Mei to help with household chores and take care of his brother, but Mei always works on her reading. After calling her three times to the kitchen, Lian was enraged.
“Consider what your family needs, not what you want! Reading is a waste of time when you have a family to feed. You have to get your priorities clear, Mei. Anything else can be sacrificed for your family.” Lian demands.
“You think sacrifice is a virtue,” Mei looked up from her book, her voice steady but sharp. “But it’s just an excuse for cruelty. Making yourself miserable doesn’t make you noble—it makes you blind.”
Lian’s hand trembled as she gripped her cane. “How dare you speak to me like this? I am your mother. Do you think you know better than centuries of tradition? This town survives because of obedience. Without it, we’d descend into chaos. Your defiance is dangerous, Mei.”
“Survive?” Mei’s voice rose. “Is this what you call surviving? Bowing and scraping to parents who treat their children like tools? You melted the ice with your body because your mother wanted soup. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
“That soup kept our family together,” Lian snapped.
“No, it made you a prisoner,” Mei retorted. “And now you want to make me one too.”
Mei’s rebellion didn’t stop at words. In the market square, she began speaking openly about Qinyi's injustices. Her words spread like wildfire, whispering in corners and behind closed doors.
“Why should obedience be absolute?” she asked one crowd. “Why should we sacrifice ourselves for rules that only benefit the powerful?”
But the village head and his secretary soon learned of her defiance. One evening, they arrived at the Zhou household, their black uniforms stark against the white snow.
“Mrs. Zhou,” the Village Head said, his tone casual yet harsh. “I’ve heard that your daughter’s actions are becoming a threat to the peace of Qinyi. It is making it hard for us to do our job protecting the people when there is such, disturbance. We wanted to notify you that if the situation continues, we’d love to help you give her and other ignorant teenagers a life lesson.”
Lian’s heart clenched. She knew what they wanted. To them, Mei was already guilty, and Lian’s role was clear: to denounce her daughter and preserve the family’s honor.
“Leave her to me for now,” Lian said, her voice steady. “I will make her see reason.”
That night, Lian confronted Mei in the dimly lit kitchen.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Mei said. Her face was pale but resolute. “I’ve spoken the truth.”
“You’ve endangered us all!” Lian shouted. “The village head doesn’t tolerate defiance. If you don’t stop, they’ll come for you—and for this family.”
“Let them,” Mei said. “You can’t live your whole life in fear, Mother. Qinyi doesn’t need more obedience. It needs courage.”
Lian’s hands trembled. For a moment, she saw herself in Mei—the fire, the determination. But where Mei’s fire burned with hope, Lian’s had been extinguished long ago, leaving only the cold.
“You’re a fool,” Lian tried to keep her voice low, but it was still very clear in the quiet night. “Courage won’t save you. It will destroy you.”
Two days later, the village head returned to her house with a few guards.
“I heard your authority as a mother wasn’t enough.” the village head said mockingly.
“I don’t know where she is,” Lian said, her voice hollow. Speaking the few words has taken all her strength. “The Zhou family has nothing to do with her anymore.”
The village head nodded with content and left the house with all his guards.
The next day, while buying groceries in the town center market, Lian read the newly put sign that covered the entire announcement board.
Important Public Notice
Dear notable people of Qinyi,
As we all know, Qinyi is built on the foundation of filial piety. Recently, a disloyal member of the community has disrupted the peace of the town. Everyone is put to danger because of her disobedience. Please let us know if you have any information about the criminal, Mei Zhou, and restore filial piety to Qinyi.
The Town Administration Office
Soon, Mei was caught, she only lasted a few days. The village was so small that after the village head had made the announcement, no one was willing to help her hide.
Mei’s trial was swift. In the town square, surrounded by falling snow, she stood before the Council of Elders. Her brothers were among the silent crowd, their faces pale with fear. Lian sat at the front as an authoritative figure of the town, her expression stony. No one could tell what she was thinking.
“Do you have any final words?” the head elder asked.
Mei’s voice rang out, clear and unwavering. “This town cannot bear fire. But one day, the snow will melt, not because of filiality, but courage. You can kill me, but you cannot kill the truth.”
The axe fell.
For weeks after Mei’s execution, Qinyi returned to its quiet, ordered existence. The snow continued to fall, covering the bloodstains in the square. Lian was praised for her loyalty for putting the town’s peace above her own daughter.
But the praise felt like ice. At night, Lian sat by the fire, staring into the flames. She thought of Mei’s words, of her fire, of the way she had refused to bow.
Lian had spent her life being the perfect daughter, wife, and citizen. She wanted to say mother too, but she wasn’t sure anymore. As she watched the fire flicker, she wondered if the superficial perfection had cost her something greater.
One morning, as she walked through the square, Lian noticed something strange. The snow on the statue of Qinyi’s founder was melting, a small trickle of water running down its base.
She reached out to touch the melting snow, her hand trembling. It was warm, faintly, like a distant memory of summer.
And for the first time in years, Lian felt something stir within her—a flicker of the fire she had long since buried.
The Little Match Girl
The Little Match Girl
[“Does anybody want a match?” The Little Match Girl asks the cold, uncaring night, her voice lost in the wind.]
It was past midnight. Xianting glanced at her cheap plastic watch and hid it under the fraying cuff of her white blouse. But there was no point in checking anyways, she had to stay till the guests finished. The watch’s ticking seemed louder in the stillness, each second dragging her closer to dawn yet keeping her trapped in the endless moment. Her feet ached, numb from six hours of standing on the uneven stone path outside the gazebo.
The pond reflected nothing but darkness. The warm light from the private room barely reached her, spilling only thin streaks onto the weathered wooden railing. She strained her ears, catching the muffled echoes of laughter and clinking glasses from the room inside. The voices were blurred, but their merriment was unmistakable, a cruel contrast to her exhaustion.
She peered into the pond, hoping to see her face—a face she’d forgotten how to recognize. But the water was black and still, a mirror of her despair. Her life felt like that marsh: deep, suffocating, inescapable.
[The Little Match Girl strikes a match. A fragile flame dances in her fingers, a fleeting warmth that only makes the cold sharper when it dies.]
Xianting’s life was not always like this. She grew up in a crowded apartment, the kind that swallowed the sky. The buildings around her were so tall they seemed to scrape away any chance of sunlight, leaving behind only grey smog and faint shadows. Privacy was a luxury she never knew—her family’s every word, every sigh, every argument, echoing through thin walls and open windows.
Her mother’s voice was the loudest. “Work harder, Xianting! You’re wasting your life staring out that window.”
But Xianting couldn’t help it. The world outside felt more alive than the drudgery of her daily life. At school, her mind wandered even as the hours stretched endlessly—fourteen a day, six days a week. She wanted to succeed, but the numbers never made sense. Her dreams felt like a distant horizon, always out of reach.
[Just as her hands are finally unfroze, the match dies, leaving a trail of smoke that curls into the freezing air.]
When the High School Entrance Exam came, she knew it was her only ticket to escape. But sleep had been a stranger in the days before, her parents’ arguments piercing the thin walls. When the results came, the numbers sealed her fate: she had fallen short.
For a hundred thousand yuan, she could have gone to high school, but that kind of money didn’t exist in her family. Her parents sent her to a training school instead—a glorified labor camp where students like her were little more than cheap hands for local businesses. The restaurant where she was placed demanded thirteen-hour shifts of cleaning and waiting tables for almost nothing.
That’s how she became a waitress at Hujing restaurant.
[The Little Match Girl stares at her dwindling supply of matches. Her trembling hands light another. She needs to sell them, but the cold demands sacrifice.]
The restaurant’s most prestigious room was a gazebo on the pond. The minimum expense was exactly a hundred thousand yuan. It was reserved for only the wealthiest customers. The kind of people who wouldn’t blink at spending in one night what could have changed her life.
The guests that night were loud and drunk. Their laughter echoed through the cracks in the black door. When they called her inside, she lowered her gaze, stepping onto the thick carpet patterned with intricate gold and cream designs. The man’s eyes bore into her like blades.
“Can’t they send someone prettier?” one said, his voice dripping with mockery.
Shame pricked her skin. Her cheeks flushed as she stared at her scuffed black shoes. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice barely audible. “The other staff have left. The kitchen is closed.”
“Well, isn’t that a pity?” another man drawled. “How about you have a drink with us, little waitress? Here, I’ll even pay you for your trouble.” He waved a crisp 200-yuan bill.
Xianting froze. She could run, but where? The consequences of defiance would haunt her tomorrow. If the guests report her, no one will believe her explanation. She will be kicked out of the job, the training school, and her parents would never want her again. The man looked kind, yet his eyes shine a darkness and greed that she cannot read. Everyone is looking at her.
The humiliation pressed down on her, a weight too heavy to bear.
The room was warm, suffocatingly so. The golden light from the chandelier seemed to pulse against Xianting’s skin. The delicate wine glass in front of her glistened.
[The Little Match Girl strikes her last match. Her fingers, stiff and purple, barely hold the flame.]
I have no choice, Xianting told herself.
She took a deep breath, stepped forward to the table, and picked up the tiny glass sitting there on the table.
“She’s a real woman!” A man yelled in such a genuine and loud voice that the praising words did not seem strange and ironic at the moment.
Xianting looked at the glass, the liquid was transparent, just like water. It was a tiny glass, she could hold it with her two fingers.
This won’t be too bad, she thought.
Without a second glance, she poured the whole glass into her mouth. It was an immediate strike of bitter, and even spiciness. She cannot help but frown. The men cheered, their voices growing louder, their gazes heavier. Her mind gradually gets clouded in the sudden warmth in contrast with the cold, and the continued loud noise that surrounds her.
She told herself she could endure it, just this once, just for tonight.
“You’re doing well, little waitress,” a man said, his words slurred with laughter. He pushed another glass toward her. She hesitated, her hand trembling as it reached for the glass. Her heart pounded, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up.
The wine burned as it slid down her throat, its warmth spreading like fire through her chest. The voices around her blurred, growing softer and softer until they were nothing but distant murmurs. The world swayed, the edges of her vision darkening. She blinked, trying to clear her head, but the warmth had turned heavy, her limbs refusing to move.
[The Little Match Girl’s last match burns out. The darkness rushes in, and the cold consumes her completely.]
One of the men stood, Xianting could see his shape gradually move close to her. His voice cut through the haze, low and smooth. “Let’s make her more comfortable.”
She wanted to resist, to run, to scream. But her eyes were blurry, her body betrayed her, sinking into the suffocating heat of the room. She let the strange touch on her body devour her. The last thing she saw was the flicker of the chandelier’s light above her.
Its glow too bright, too cruel.
[The dawn finds her crumpled against a wall, her small body frozen, a bundle of burnt-out matches clutched in her lifeless hand.]
When morning came, Xianting didn’t remember everything. She woke on the cold stone path outside the gazebo, her head pounding and her blouse rumpled. The sun was up, but she didn’t know what time it was. There was no point in checking anyways. The air was frigid, the pond still and grey, and the restaurant was eerily quiet. Her body ached, but it was a strange, hollow ache, as if something had been taken from her. She pulled her blouse tighter around herself, staring at the reflection of the sky in the water.
She looked down into the pond again, the water that was black and still in the night had grown brighter, yet it felt darker than ever. She couldn’t see her fifteen-year old face, only a mirror of despair that delineates her outline. She felt stranded in the marsh: deep, suffocating, inescapable.