She looks out across a field of bubbles, iridescent thought moving across their surfaces as elsewhere, things dreamed.

(She lives to dream; she lives on dreams. She has nothing left these days but her dreams.)

She stands in the same place every day, every night, not that the terms really fit here.

(Not that the terms really fit her.)

Halfway through the field of bubbles is an invisible line which she mentally does not cross, cannot cross, but she can see across it anyway, see darkness and pain and misery, and knows it is not herself but the other her, and she reaches out pale arms and begs, without words.

The dark tower looms on the horizon, unanswering, unanswerable, bent and twisted and broken, dark, dark, so dark.

Still, she reminds herself. She has set up a flame. A flame in her tower -

(A flame in her heart, still burning)

- and someday, it will light the other-her's way home.

***

She looks out over a field of glass, turned inward in their spheres so that the spikes of pain that all glass must one day needs become is turned inward, on the dreamers.

(No, she tells herself, not dreamers. She will not use that word, she tells herself she does not care to. She cares. She does not care. She cares. She does not care. She scares. She does not fear.)

She stands in that place all the time. She does not care to leave. (she cares). She wishes sometimes that she could look away from the bright tower so far away, but even the darkness cannot hide that, because there is a flame in the tower, flickering, mocking, mocking, mocking.

(Bitch, she thinks. Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch I hate you bitch I hate you hate you hate you bitch hate you bitch hate you God I hate you God I hate)

She snarls wordlessly, worldlessly, and cannot look away.