A boulder, a rock protruding from the shadowed sands was her regal throne. She ruled an empire of one, and her legitimacy in that position was perpetually disputed. Her region was a nomad, banished out of her homelands into lifelong exile – a finality which brought relief in comparison to the hell of repulsively rational fear and constant speculation of when the day would eventually arise over the horizon with a smoky sunrise that summoned the beginning of the finale out of the celestial reverie, closing the curtains on her melodramatic tragedy. But, despite her liberation, she professed little desire for the conquest of greater territory. In all sincerity and scarred by the callous claws of irony, her confinement was tenfold worse now in freedom than it had ever been while previously chained to the dungeon walls and ruthlessly tortured, and that was an optimistic assessment.

In her dreams, she cast her monarchy into the fire and stormed out of her cavernous, imperial halls of dirt and left her dismal cycle of relentless monotony and miserable imitation of the motions which used to bare a significant meaning in favour of pursuing her true nature, her calling and perhaps stumbling upon a state near enough to content to keep her satisfied or, at a minimum, alive. However, she quickly discovered that concocting elaborate yet conceivable plots and vowing on her honour to act them out was an idea stranded at the bottom of an oceanic trench when compared to the steep cliffs of Everest that was following them through. The instant she set her foot down on that acceleration pedal, her ultimate primal phobia – the monster lurking around the corner in her poignant, tormenting nightmares of most dire peril and horrific suffering – would consume her, only waking up in a cold sweat with layers of ice melting off of her spine was by no means an option when her darkness was real.

Ashley feared (living, breathing, growing, sleeping, choking, feeling, going, fighting, acting, changing, walking, staying, becoming, leaving, crying, failing, trying, existing, laughing, hurting, suffering, bleeding, singing, playing, waking, screaming, praying, sitting, working, ageing, dying) being alone.

The thought of ending up on her own, with nobody but the silence, scared her to the point where she lay awake at night and she screamed and she cried about it but was too afraid to risk sleep, knowing her subconscious never let her forget the cruel demons that haunted her. This phobia was not irrational, though. Her loneliness was inevitable. She jinxed herself with the prophetic assumptions of it since her date of birth. It was destiny. Her only hope – a false hope – lay inside delaying it, just a little longer, until the courage to move responded to that raincheck and carried her elsewhere.