A white expanse greeted her eyes. Empty, desolate, cold, and foreboding, she shuddered as she tried to move. Only to find her efforts for naught, floating in the white expanse of nothing.

Worry and fear shot through her as time seemed to pass in the white place. Thoughts whirled in her head as she tried to place where she was. A sense of familiarity seemed to eat at her as she tried to look around. But there was nothing to look at, just a white expanse.

Purgatory? Was the one thing she had found herself calling the white place. She did not feel pain, nor hunger, there was no suffering. A part of her wanted to sleep, but another part of her wanted to explore and exploit the...place.

It was such a difference in color she was almost certain she was hallucinating. There was a phenomenon like that, imagining things when one was going through torment like this. Of course she would have known if this was torture, but the yellow spark burst again and she knew for certain she had to follow it.

The question was not if she should follow it, rather how would she be able to, as she was floating and couldn't control her movements. She had tried everything, moving her legs rapidly, swimming in thin air, wriggling like a worm, and a hundred more. She wasn't tired, physically speaking she could keep it up for quite a while. But there had to be another way.

The yellow spark had grown exponentially brighter. It's color and depth a welcome change to the white. She had longed for it, desperately trying to reach out for it. But all she could do was let her outstretched arm reach for something much too far.

"Don't give up now" a gentle voice whispered. "Almost there" it encouraged.

She had looked up to see the yellow spark form into an odd flower shaped pin. She reached out for it and held it close, warmth filling her.

Her eyes snapped awake and she suddenly sat up on her bed. Sweat trickled down her forehead and a headache was forming in her throbbing head. She swings her feet down to the bed before shuffling towards the bathroom door.

Staring at the mirror she sees her black hair slicked with sweat, falling around her in heavy clumps. Her skin was pale, white as the sheets that she used, and her eye bags looked as deep and dark as the abyss that she called her life.

"You look horrible" she croaked to her own reflection. A bitter smile crosses her lips but it still remains there. A smile, a small smile.

She turns on the faucet and splashes her face with the cold water. As she washes her face, a pink streak lingers at the end of her peripheral vision.

A cold, heavy lump forms in her throat and for some odd reason a feeling of being watched gnaws at her.

As she closed the faucet and wipes her face with a towel, a pair of golden eyes flash by her closed eyes. She gasps and nearly falls over, only to be caught by her dog who was wagging his tale energetically.

"Good boy" she murmured as she scratched behind his ear.