Alone.

Yes, that is the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is a poor synonym.

~Stephen King

Loving people draws them close to you. She can't tolerate being close. She can't breath with people close. The lightest touch is a blow. She can't tolerate being touched.

She doesn't know why. At night, when she's all alone, she sometimes tries to think why she is this way. Thinking about it only makes her cry. When she's alone in the dark, crying, she wishes that she lived in a different world, not this one.

Here, where she was entirely and utterly alone, she also can't tolerate the silence. She can't breath without the once lively noises of the people that once filled this land with song and dance, of the bird's calling, of the bee's working, of her laughing…

Now all there was left was the sound of her stomach pleading for real food; here, on this small, deserted, fruitless island, she was dying from the lack of food, clean water, and human contact.

She was young, now twelve years old, and has only seen her once beautiful village turn to ruin in her lifetime… But she was younger. When she was ten years old, her twin sister was taken away from her by a monster only she could see; she died from her nightmares.

It was such a long time into hiding from the pirates in the forest when her worst dreams started becoming better than the world she woke up to that morning. Soon, the real world became the true nightmare and her dreamless naps were her only escape from it. But, not even the salvation of sleep could protect her from the true nightmare of living. They had found her and with one simple swipe of a dull blade, she was gone.

She knew that her twin was better off, that a quick death in her sleep was a thousand times better than dying of starvation and loneliness. Her only regret was not being there to die with her. To take her hand and walk into the 'light' together. But she was stuck here and sentenced to die a slow and painful death by the pirates that killed everyone she's ever came in contact with, everyone she's ever know, everyone she's ever came to love.

She was the only one left, the only one to remember what it was like before the inevitable.

She couldn't tolerate people… too scared they would get too close and she would lose them too.

"Did you have a nightmare in your sleep again, Shi?"

"No. It was when I woke up, Minette."

"What happened when you woke up?"

"I was having a dream. I don't know what it was, but when I woke up, I had this bad realization that I was awake. It hit me like a brick in the face."

"Like a brick in the face. I see."

"I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare, Minette."

"And what is that nightmare, Shi?"

"Life."

"Life is a nightmare."

"Yeah. It really is Minette..."