By the middle of the fourth week, Kahlua was thoroughly convinced she would never know anything but barriers ever again, for the rest of her life. Was she a horse or a wall? It was becoming hard to tell the difference. She had lost herself so completely in her work that there was no longer a difference between herself and her creation. She was the thing that she was making. And when she looked around her at those who were helping, she felt a feeling like she was looking at them from the frame of reference of the wall. Without magic, this was as close as she would ever get to an out of body experience. She felt a sense of grandiose pride about herself but it was not longer because of what she was making. It was because of what she was. Kahlua felt her feelings for the wall the same way a cathedral looks down upon its city and feels pretentious because it knows it is better than any citizen that might deign to enter.

But having the feelings or not, Kahlua did not and could not understand them. She felt the greatness within her, but she did not know why. The only things she actually felt that she comprehended was exhaustion to the point of madness. Her dreams were not even walls anymore. They were strange, metaphorical shows of light and shapes and other things that could not be named. If she had a drug, if she felt dependence on anything in her life, it was this wall. And like any good drug addict, it might be expected that she would withdraw when her drug was no longer available to her. After all, at some point the land would come to an end. At some point, the forest would run out and a cliff would appear and the wall would have nothing solid to stand on anymore. Walls cannot be built to stand on air.

There were days when she woke and felt glimmers of her former self, and she would look into the distance, and she would think she could hear the sound of crashing waves coming closer. And on these days, where she was almost Kahlua again, she hated her life, because the crashing made her think of the Antheia and the way her body had crashed down to the shore like every new splash of water. And so it was most days that she preferred to be lost in the strange, drug-like coma that made her work go by so quickly. If anyone was talking to her anymore, she did not hear it. As a barrier of glass, she could not fathom the concept of conversation or the idea of words. She was lost, a mad-woman on a quest to end her suffering and continue it forever.

And then one day it did come. It did happen that she woke and she knew she heard the crashing waves nearby. And ahead of her, the dragon queen and the valiant minds that followed her stopped their work. And Kahlua wondered why. The tendrils of the mists wavered and fell, Kahlua turned her head and perked her ears. The sun was only just above the horizon. Why had they stopped? She picked up a trot, covered the few feet between herself and the rest, and found that she was at the world's end. There was no more. Just the few feet from where she had left off to where she stood now. And in that moment, joy overrode every feeling of utter defeat that was consuming her body. She screamed to the heavens, a joyous sound and she galloped back to where she had left off.

With forceful thoughts and blood that pumped as fast as she wished the wall would build itself, Kahlua urged the mists on. The wall did not lose any of its strength or features, she was careful enough to keep them in place, but she wanted the thing to be done. If she had been wondering if she should be wall or woman for the rest of her life, she had made her choice. She wanted to live. She wanted to be Kahlua and run and play and laugh and dance and live her life as a painted mare. She was not meant to be a wall of glass, she was not meant to be stoic and timeless an look down upon others with haughty thoughts in her head. She was not meant to sleep at night with dreams of prisms and refractory light. She was meant to be organic and soulful.

With every moment the wall grew, but it was still a painfully slow process. Inches added, then feet and yards, and then she was there, at the edge of the wall, and it was touching the cliff's edge and she could go no further. None would be able to walk around the thing. Only pegasi would be able to circumvent this end of the wall, but walls could not cage birds anyway. A scream filled the air, a joyous sound as she leaped about like a foal and then cried out to the heavens, “We did it, we did it!” She ran about, trying to touch everyone that was near her, to nuzzle them her thanks and devotion and eternal gratitude. If it takes a village to raise a child, then this wall was her baby.

But even joy could not give her energy forever, in a few moments all the dancing took its toll. Kahlua collapsed on the ground at the foot of the wall, laying her back up against the edge of the monstrous creation. But when she fell asleep, as she did almost immediately, she did not have psychotic dreams induced by ravers with glow sticks and neon signs. She fell into a slumber that was simple and easy, meant for a babe. She slept as soundly as anyone had ever slept before, and were it not for her breathing one would have thought her dead. From time to time she would awaken only to shift her weight and lay on the other side, so as not to alleviate the pain that came from being in one place for an extended period of time, but she did not move far. In fact, she thought she might just sleep the rest of her life away in this location. Perhaps the morning would change her mind.

OOC| End week four. Wall complete, feel free to continue on the thread if you feel so inclined. As before, you can always back-track and say you were helping to build. I don't mind!

.KAHLUA