Sitting in her cell, she would search for things to contain her mind, sometimes rather desperately. The puns and nonsensical riddles kept her sane, and she adored every wisp of sanity in her tortured condition.
She would failingly try to identify the fleeting smell of the cheap hair products that her cell mate used. Burnt ammonia. Flaming cyanide. She ached to let it burn her throat just once.
She would stare at her reflection for hours, the cracked mirror an indignant trap that caught her easily. Poor, brilliant fool. She would never realize that the finger pointed right back at her.
They wondered about her laughing, but they didn't worry.
I'm under the weather. She'd conclude after hours of broken formulas ran through her head. I'm far, far under the weather. Laughing.
They hung the glass in front of her eyes, swung it back and forth like a rope. They would watch as she took part of it off, holding it in her hands like a solution to her neon overdrive. And then they'd remove the threat, as easily and pulling the noose apart.
She'd ponder everything, storing away bits of sense for the future. She would need it. It was only a matter of time.
Sanity, she knows without any numbers or variables to cloud her mind, always comes in handy. That was the only thing she needed to know the finish the equation.
Without a constant, everything falls apart. Sanity is her constant.
A/N: This is the last thing I'll be writing for a while, as I'll be headed off for Washington tomorrow. Tell me what you think, please. Eoin Colfer owns it, of course . . . But do you know what of this he owns?