She swallowed the darkness with every breath; it was so thick. There was no escape. Just darkness all around, all within. The only colour: tiny droplets of crimson, turning into gold, once they hit the ground.
‘My soul is still bleeding then.’ A thought. As she stared at her feet, immersed in a puddle of gold. The pain screamed into her ears. There was no escape. No running. Nowhere to go, but deeper into her self. Deeper, and deeper, through the darkness, she went. The pain jumped out at her, screeching again, but she pushed it aside. Deeper, and deeper, until she saw a thread of light, the first thing she actually saw since the crimson and gold.
Light.
She bent down to pick up the thread. Her hand touched the vibrating cord. There was sound. A quiet sound. Some sort of hum. She pulled. The sound became louder. Amidst the humming there were words. So she kept pulling. There seemed to be more thread, somewhere, deep in the darkness. She held tight, kept pulling, and began to make a ball of yarn—a ball of light.

The sun shone, on this chilly May morning, she could already feel the warmth on her face. Toes ice-cold and barefoot in morning-dewed grass as she walked among the rows of apple trees. Gentle blossoms in white and pink. Leaves beginning to emerge. Blackbirds singing. She was content, in the middle of spring.

The ball of light became bigger as she moved along, the humming louder, the words clearer.

A little girl in a blue and white nightgown stood underneath an apple tree, reaching for fragile blossoms—carefully. Cold dew dripped, and left traces of winter-echoes running along her arm. Everything was so clear. The air. The morning. The blackbirds. Life. This was before. Before the darkness came.

She sobbed. ‘How many ways to say goodbye?’ A second thought. It was easier to breathe now with the ball of light in her hand.

The dragon moved his claws lazily through the sand, just the claws not the paws. The other dragon turned her head to look at him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I am stretching.’ He chuckled.
The little girl was curled up in the crook of his arm. She giggled.
‘Can I hide a bit longer here? I am scared of the darkness.’
‘Of course child.’ She-dragon said.

‘I remember.’ Thought number three.
‘I remember!’ She almost shouted
‘Eventually the girl was grown older, and.’ She paused.
‘And the dragons, pushed her, gently, a paw steadying her lower back; but they pushed her away; to go out into the world; to face the darkness; to stand on her own two feet.’ She continued the story, quietly talking to herself. The ball of light had grown. She was barely able to hold it in two hands now.

A blue ball-gown swished as she twirled. She didn’t want to go to the ball. Loss had torn a black hole into her heart, into her soul. Darkness had already begun to ooze, taking over, pushing the light away, and making her ill.

‘And then I walked through the garden for hours and sang. I sang. The words just came; the melody just came. And everyone was listening, the grass listened, the beetles, the birds, and the hare in the field behind the garden fence. Everyone stood still and listened, as I called them in my songs!’

‘That’s it!’ She shouted, almost dropping the ball of light, clutched tight to her chest. Light was dripping from the twine, running through her fingers. Escaping.
‘I bore witness to life!’ She shouted on top of her lungs.
‘No!’ She stopped herself.
‘I do bear witness to life. I do bear witness to love! I am light.’
And the ball of yarn exploded into a thousand rainbows, into a thousand songs, into a thousand stories, into a thousand poems. And the little girl in the blue and white nightgown danced out of the darkness into the light. Blue ball-gown swishing. Gold glistening as it sprayed in all directions with each dancing step. And then she sang. She sang again to the grass, to the trees, to the beetles, and to the hare and the fox, in the field behind the garden fence.