SAANJH POV

Everything is blurred.

Shapes melt into each other —
a swirl of grays and whites,
a thick fog swallowing everything I once knew.

Am I standing?
Floating?
I don't know anymore.

I'm just... here.
Lost.
Small.

No path.
No horizon.
No hands reaching out for me.

Only the fog, pressing cold and damp against my skin,
whispering things I cannot understand.

My heart beats somewhere deep —
faint, struggling —
like a drum muffled under layers of silence.

Where am I?

Alive?
Dead?
Dreaming?

I try to call out —
try to speak —
but my voice doesn't work.
The sound dies before it even touches the air.

All I have left is this ache.
The ache of something slipping away from me —
the ache of me slipping away.

I move forward, or maybe I'm just falling —
blindly, desperately reaching for something I can't name.

And then —
through the thick mist —
something flickers.

A warmth.
A pulse.
A thread of life.

I stumble toward it without thinking.
Without hope.
Only instinct.

The fog thins —
just barely —
and finally, I see it.

A meadow.

Stretching out before me,
lush and green,
as far as I can see.
The grass sways in the breeze,
the air rich with the scent of earth,
of life.
Of peace.

I step forward.
My feet, bare and tender, touch the soft ground.
I feel the coolness of the earth beneath me,
but it's not harsh.
It's warm, almost welcoming.

I pause.

Here, in this place,
there is no pain.
No cruelty.
No weight pressing against me.

Only the soft sound of the wind,
the hum of insects,
and the quiet rustle of the trees in the distance.

I take another step.

And then another.
It's like I'm moving for the first time in years,
like my soul is waking up,
stretching out into the sun.

The meadow feels endless.
There's no end, no beginning.
It's simply... here.
A place where I can breathe without fear.
A place where I can be free.

The sky above is so vast,
so open,
it makes me feel small,
but not in the way the world made me feel.
Here, I am small in the right way —
small enough to feel the weight of the earth beneath me,
but light enough to soar.

This place, this meadow,
is all I've ever wanted.
It is quiet, untouched by time,
untouched by the world I left behind.
It is a haven.

No one can harm me here.
No one can touch me.
No one can ask anything of me.

Here, I am just... me.

And for the first time in so long,
I feel at peace.

They say beauty is a boon.
A gift.
A blessing.

But they forget—
they forget to believe that it can be a curse, too.

And for me,
it was.

A curse I lived.
A curse I carried in my bones and on my skin.
A curse that made men turn cruel,
that made the world hungry,
that made safety an impossible dream.

While others lived their lives in light,
I lived mine in shadow.
Hiding.
Running.
Fighting battles I never chose,
paying for a face I never asked for.

They looked at me and saw something delicate.
Pretty.
Breakable.

But they never saw the scars beneath.
The nights I wrapped my arms around myself and prayed to become invisible.
The mornings I woke up still breathing,
still bleeding,
and called it survival.

Beauty never saved me.
It hunted me.
It marked me.

And in the end, it left me here—
broken, battered, floating between two worlds.
One foot in the grave,
one hand still clinging,
somehow, to life.

Yet now...
now, as I drifted deeper into the silence,
something different brushed against my soul.

A place.
A world not made of fear and violence,
but of soft winds and tender skies.

I sat there —
or maybe I floated, weightless —
in a meadow stitched together with sunlight and gentle breezes.

The air smelled of wildflowers,
sweet and forgiving.
The ground was warm beneath my bare feet.
Here, there were no eyes leering, no hands grabbing, no shadows waiting to devour me.

Here... I was not prey.
I was simply me.

A girl who had once laughed freely.
Who had once looked at the stars and believed in promises.

A life I had hoped for —
a life I had once dared to dream —
unfolded around me now like a forgotten lullaby.

For a moment, the pain faded.
The terror, the endless running —
it all slipped away.

And I let it.
I let myself believe — even for just a breath —
that maybe this was mine.
That maybe somewhere, somehow,
this world could be real.

I tilted my face up to the soft, endless sky,
the tears slipping from my closed lashes unnoticed.

I want this.
Please.
Let me have this.

I don't want to go back .please.. 

let me be here only..

But even as I whispered it into the golden air,
the edges of this dream began to blur.

A cold wind stirred.
The earth beneath her shifted.

Far away — almost outside herself —
a voice broke through the warmth.

It was rough.
Choked.
Fierce.

"Don't give up."

I frowned, disoriented.

The dream clung to me, sweet and thick,
begging me to stay.
To forget the pain, the fear.
To rest.

But that voice—
that trembling, desperate voice—
it wrapped itself around her like a tether,
pulling her back from the edge.

"You are not alone anymore."
"There's life inside you, little warrior. Fight."

My fingers curled weakly.
The soft earth beneath me grew cold.

I didn't want to go.
I didn't want to wake up into pain.
But something — something fierce and stubborn — lit up inside me.

A heartbeat.
A tiny flutter.

Not just mine.

Ours.

My child.
The last piece of me untouched by the world's cruelty.

I couldn't abandon her.
Not now.

Tears slipped down my cheeks, even as the dream tore away.
Even as the pain returned — sharp, brutal, real.

I was falling, tumbling, crashing back into the broken body waiting for me.

The thread around me tightens, pulling, pulling —
back toward breath,
back toward pain,
back toward the fight.

Back toward the tiny, precious heartbeat still fluttering inside me.

I don't know if I can make it.
I don't know if I'm strong enough.

But I know one thing—
I am not ready to let go.

Not yet.

But this time—

this time, there is a feeling that I wasn't falling alone.

 ♡

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