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Door open, she tossed off the seatbelt and tore into a dead-sprint. She was to the other car in seconds. The person in the other vehicle was unresponsive but alive, slowly and unconsciously moving to protect himself. Despite all she could muster, her effort fell short as the door and distance between them was unmoving. As if their lives had become cinematic, cliché, drawn unto an infinite moment – their breaths in sync as this single instant dragged on forever; no rain, just salty tears crossing a dry, helpless expression.

And then nothing.

Static. A loose feeling and a warped perspective. Conscious but dreaming and dreaming of a piercing white…. If you could call it dreaming.

The sound of waves crashing against a craggy beach. Wind whipping against rock faces and outcroppings. Sparse sounds that indistinctly mark a landscape as barren if one had but the inclination to listen deeply. A guttural cough followed by a gasp; as if her body was learning to breathe for the first time. She rolls onto her side with air seemingly invading her form, rushing to and fro over her tongue and through her teeth. For what seemed like years, as the waves crash hither and thither, she lay motionless only inhaling and exhaling; a consciousness slowly growing more and more aware of itself. Eyelids flash open to take in scenery foreign to the mind, even considering the many other perceptions that also feel… foreign. Sound, sight, awareness, cognition, presence… the conceptions of intelligent thought and action slowly align themselves.

“Wait.” Pondering to herself. “Who am I?” The subtle inane connections fire off in her mind, thoughts forming, life becoming realized. An explosion pierces her mind and comes to fruition in bright white. “I am…. me… right?” Her gaze shifts from the unending tides and broken shores that decorate the horizon to a form… while familiar, couldn’t be more disconcerting… more inconceivable. Digits extend out from appendages with joints that bisect their lengths. Flexion and tension allow movement in this seemingly unknown form whilst maintaining an air of familiarity. 

“I…” she begins to enunciate before dropping off just as quickly. “Whose voice was that?” The thought races from concept to concern before it can even be considered.

Clarity washes over her perception as she begins to fully realize her surroundings. A wave hits a nearby outcropping and the clap startles her. “Where am I?” Her vision scatters along her environment, taking in the truth that she is somewhere desolate – alone. Naked? She moves quickly to cover herself, struggling to her feet. As if her legs were made of sand, her gait is labored from the moment of fully standing into walking… into jogging… into sprinting. She falls numerous times as the series of falls lessen and lessen. She falls to her knees at the foot of a large, steep rock face. The disorientation she faces is stifling as she gasps for breath she extensively considers her present situation: what the hell is going on?

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