She wears a key around her neck like it's a precious amulet, protecting her from all the dangers in the world.
Maybe it is.
She never takes it off, but she never touches it. She won't change her t-shirt, even though it needs washing badly. She carries a stain treater pen with her and uses it to erase smudges of dirt. It's like she's carrying fire.
Maybe she is.
There's a shelf in her room, a shelf that holds a collection of precious treasures, some rare, some simple, many worthless to everyone else. But to her, they are worth more than her very life. She acts as though it would kill her to lose them.
Maybe it would.
She's torn between forgetting and holding on. Forgetting would be less painful. Holding on would give her something to remember when she felt as though her life didn't mean anything, had never meant anything, would never mean anything. She tries to forget and stop suffering, but she can't let go. It's as if she would be nothing without the memories.
Maybe she would.
She goes from store to store, and everything reminds her. She stops in the hardware store, and her fingers run over the tools. She picks them up, examining them, as if she expects one to be different. None of them ever are, but she acts as if they would reveal some secret if she only knew how to make them.
Maybe they would.
She cries sometimes, not usually, not as much as most people would. She's lost part of her life, she longs to have what is impossible for her to have, but she doesn't cry usually, only sometimes. She has nothing, when for a too-brief time she had everything, everything she could ask her, and still she holds her head high. She walks in a waking dream, her mind in the past, her body in the future, looking at something far away.
And then she feels pain, like fire, burning through her t-shirt, the one she never changes, and the key, her greatest treasure, bends her will. The life comes back to her eyes, and she runs. By instinct or silent instructions, she knows where to go.
The bright white light that glows near her heart tells her that she was right to hold on.
A/N: That one was...different. I'm not sure where that all came from.