It is a terrible feeling, knowing he isn't really sleeping. But sleeping sounds much nicer, much kinder, than what really happened, and she thinks he would like it better if she truly though he was only sleeping.

So she simply lets him rest, cradling the little stem of rose, a single blue, torn, petal skewered on the thorns, mingled with little drops of red blood.

Red and blue always looked better side-by-side anyways.

So when she leaves him there—sleeping—she feels more than a little sad, and her tears fall more than a little heavily, and the childish crayon world does nothing to comfort her because everything is in ruins and ashes.

So she wanders, listlessly, past the chalky sun and the waxy lakes, into the room with a painting of the gallery.

The gallery, the way out, the escape, the everything, and she just stumbles upon it.

And her heart, already fractured at the ashes and her sleeping friend, simply shatters at the sight of paintings shaped like her parents in the gallery, gazing at innocent things that tried to kill her (how long ago?) and not even noticing she was missing, missing, missing.

The little rivers of tears along her face, mostly stemmed from the monotony of the walk, spring back to life, the dam holding the emotions back burst wide open. The sound of a single droplet multiplies into a patter of salty rain on the black marble floor. The frame disappears, and she swears she could walk right through it, back to home, to normal.

It is hard to read, and she cannot understand the first word, but the plaque beneath the painting only succeeds in making everything meaningless.

All your time here will be lost.

Lost?

Her legs give out, and she stares up in undisguised horror, knees aching from the sudden landing. Then she scoots away, the lights flickering and she can see the world reshaping, closing the gateway back.

Gold frames the canvas scene and she sits.

She sits and sits and sits and does not move one inch, the only things distinguishing her from the statutes are the tears and muffled sobs.

And then, as if sensing some invisible trigger, she crawls. She crawls past the marble floor, black where it should be white, and down the stairs she had walked up to get there. She crawls up the stairs to the pink streets and black sky. She crawls past the room of ashes. Pausing to sit in the petals of blue, just outside the doorway.

She crawls next to Garry.

He is only sleeping because he is tired, she thinks. And slowly, almost forced, she yawns.

She smiles and settles herself next to him, lifting his arm up and sliding herself underneath the large gap. While attempting to get comfortable, she feels the small, round candy in her pocket, and reverently takes the little sweet out.

It's lemon flavored, sweet and sunny and her favorite.

One cheek distended by the round candy, she lays next to her friend and closes her eyes, feeling for the fresh rose in her pocket.

And as the petals fall, one by one, she falls asleep to the taste of lemons and saline tears, freshly shed from tightly closed lids.

Ib never opens her blood-red eyes again, sleeping eternally.