Until then, if there was indeed an actual time when that might take place, her only outlet remained her arts and imagination. Although continuing the charade brought her a little closer to death every day, quite literally, and lying in order to sustain companionship or love made her feel more abandoned and desolate in their company than she ever did while in actual solitude, like she was on the beach in those incredible hours securing a safe path through the chaotic world for the pure morning which trailed after them. And so her pens served a short lifespan, her books of blank pages were full of her darkest secrets, her floor was strewn with torn out mistakes or words too painful to admit, her frets were stained with dried blood and sweat, her fingers were blistered and cut on both hands, her ears rang from the blaring volume of overdriven feedback from her amp through headphones, her sheets intermingled with the flavour of tears, her head overflowed with a maelstrom of practiced speeches for telling the truth, her mind balanced precariously on an edge that threatened to shift, and all that separated her current situation from the above was that her car was now her sanctuary and residence instead of her room.

Still, it was safer than ensuring her lonely demise. It was familiar. It gave her all she ever wanted. It promised her a source of love and affection, didn’t it? Even if that was the rope tying her to her labours of agony and passion, taking the pain away for a few minutes but slowly killing her nevertheless. She didn’t know what would come first; her death from poverty or suicide, or the exhaustion of all her ideas and poetry, which was equally lethal.

The rolling downbeat of thunder rumbled towards the shore, sending the waves into a panicked frenzy as they struggled to escape the wrath of the tyrant’s impending approach. Ashley glanced up from her furiously scribbled translation of everything and nothing and anything and something – generally satisfied with their meaning and the pictures they described – the chill winds tossing her hair about and lathering a coat of frost upon her cheeks. A blue darker even than the massive ocean below marred the distant swirls and lumps of cloud that sailed across the liquid sky many miles away, standing out against surrounding greys and lighter shades of dawn. There was still time; she could stay if she wanted to, and she did.