The feeling that permeates her fur from dawn to dusk is one akin to nothing she has ever experienced. It's like the sun has swallowed her, leaving her pelt and flesh to boil as she struggles through rapidly sinking quicksand. The lens over her eyes. . . the darkness that burns everything she looks at. . . it's all because of him. The thistle. Crying is never enough to endure the pain that returns afterward. It's most comparable, really, to the feeling of having each individual hair plucked out of her body, until she's stripped of what she needs to stay safe. Until she's nothing but a corpse, a bald specimen that holds nothing of life. She wants death, craves it even. But until then, she must live each day with pain.