Every time you take a breath-

A hiker is taking the journey West. She takes small, tentative steps that make the journey long, and cold, but the Spring that follows is warm.

Bringing flowers that come from a land of paradise.

The hiker comes from this land of paradise, a land of light and pure knowledge of the world beyond you. She is elegant, even in her hiking gear, she continues her journey on.

She climbs the mountaintops that are frozen at the top. The lakeside scent that surrounds her is almost enough to warm the ice, to bring spring to the valleys. And she hopes her quest will not be for naught.

Her once star-crossed eyes reflect the darkness of the land, where the grass has all but died and the life has shriveled away to nothingness. Once she reaches the end of this quest, she hopes that the seeds will begin to sprout.

It is not like she has never been here before, oh, she has, back when it was dawn and the sun was peeking over the lake to meet her gaze, back when the stars were beginning to fly off into the distance. She treks this land without a sound.

She has not mentioned that it is nighttime here, and that it is a moonless night in a starless sky. And that the river, on its way to a place where there is light and freedom, is dammed.

She wonders if the clear blue and the warm brown will ever find her, or if they will dissolve into the darkness as she almost did.

There is no way she can lose. There is nothing to lose here, in a soulless place where no one would dare leave a piece of themselves behind.

She loves the place where she came from. And this place that used to smell like hope and dreams, this place of darkness, is a place that she thinks she loves no longer.

And yet, she is wrong about herself. She loves this place more than the place she came from.

For the hope she brings, while it is clear and colorless, scatters across the land, so that if one day when the sun rises, this place will become beautiful again.

Beautiful as she is and has always been.

She is serene here, at peace because she hopes, and she thinks that she will find the morning if she finds the heart of the darkness, and ignites it with not fire but pure light.

She is beautiful, and she is the light.

Every time she comes here, you shove her away with your walls. Every time you breathe.

She leaves this lifeless place with teary eyes. But she is dead herself.

You have brought the darkness here, and you shall keep it that way.

But every once in a while, you release a tortured sob.