» I can't go on any farther. Fatigue had rendered her so lightheaded that each step felt like she were walking on clouds, a disembodied consciousness moving someone else's exhausted and limp body like a puppeteer. Yet she knew it was her own body because every movement set her gaunt frame to trembling, her very flesh and blood breaking down under the stress of the emotional burdens she bore. Even hunger and thirst seemed like foreign, faraway concepts, though somewhere inside she was vaguely aware that she had not eaten or drunk in far too long. What did it matter anymore, anyways? I can't go on. With a barely audible sigh like the whispers of death, her legs finally folded and dropped her weary bones at the base of a large tree, its rough bark leaving dark streaks where it scraped against her side. The blemishes upon her once-pristine figure went entirely unnoticed among the rest of the dirt and grime that had accumulated during her travels, staining her brown until hardly any white remained to be seen. Long blonde locks now lay in tangled and lackluster mats, and without closer inspection they too could easily have been mistaken to be colored brown. Once upon a time, all this would have been a horrifying and unacceptable state of condition, but now she simply couldn't bring herself to care.

» I cannot go on, yet I must not turn back. Being caught in this paradox made her head swim and her breath come up in short gasps. It would have been a lie to say that it was not tempting to let go of everything else just as easily as she had let go of caring about her appearance. She'd had plenty of opportunity to do so already; all she'd had to do was stop struggling, stop resisting, and either nature's elements or predators would come and take her into oblivion. But against all the odds she had survived, through mutilation, heartbreak, even infection in her poor stump of a wing, and somewhere inside there was a fierce instinct of self-preservation that kept her struggling, kept her suffering, but kept her alive. She would never have guessed that it could be so painful just to go on being.

» Warily, she forced herself to look more closely at her surroundings, taking in the unfamiliar trees, exotic (to her eyes) vegetation, and lingering scents of strangers. It was clear she was entering a borderland of some sort, and the prospect of what lay beyond thrilled and terrified her to her core. Instinctively she drew her only remaining wing up around her like a feathered security blanket, tucking her nose into her soft down feathers and falling entirely still much like a bird. Perhaps, if she just rested for a bit, blocked out the outside world and dreamed of halcyon days gone by until she was ready to face reality, she could summon up the courage and strength to keep moving forward.

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