She was trapped – the space around her had no shape, no restrictions, but she was still trapped. Delphine could walk for miles in either direction and still see nothing but darkness. No friends, no family, not even the people she hated, there was no one there for her. It was in this vast nothingness that she sat, legs pulled in against her chest and her forehead pressed into the space between her knees. For what seemed like hours she did not move, did not even seem to breathe. She got the strange sense that it had always been this way, that it was not hours that she experienced this loneliness, but years. If it had been so long… then why was she still sad? Was there no one around, not even at one point in her life, to tell her to move on?

There was no one now. There had been someone, once upon a time. When there was no one else, that person had been there. Who they were… Delphine couldn’t remember now. It had been a long time since she had been embraced, since she had heard whispered comfort against her ear. In those times, she had cried until her eyes turned red, until her nose was dripping with snot that when she noticed it, she’d hastily wipe it away with the sleeve of her shirt.

Now, she didn’t cry, and she did not think it was because she was stronger than before. Perhaps it was because there was no one around to hear her cry, so what was the point? Crying showed others that you were feeling distress, but if there was no one around to see it, and thus to comfort her, then there was no use in crying. The urge tightened her throat, made her wrap her arms ever tighter around her legs, to hug herself because no one else would.

She wasn’t strong enough to pull herself out of this, even so, she tried. The girl stood up on legs weak from lack of use (how long had she been sitting there?), and began to walk again. For hours she walked without progress – there was no way to gauge how far she was going, nor was there really any way to tell how long she had been walking. Occasionally she thought she saw something, someone. It was just the briefest flicker of light out of the corner of her eye, never around long enough for her to determine whether her mind was tricking itself or if there was actually someone there.

She thought it ludicrous to believe that someone was there, though. No one, besides the one who was gone now, had even attempted to reach out to her before in this world, so why now? She laughed a bitter sound that quickly transformed into something broken. Tears welled in her eyes unbidden, but didn’t dare fall.

Collapsing onto her knees, her hands reached out to grasp something that wasn’t there. Why were they gone now? Why had no one besides that person ever been there for her, so that when she lost the one she valued so greatly she’d have someone to help pull her out of her grief? She was so alone, and she hated it! She hated every second of this existence; she hated herself even for continuing to live in it. She was helpless to do anything, to change the darkness around her into something real and tangible.

They had left her here!

She had no grasp of who they were, but she hated them for making her endure this. She even began to hate the only person who had been there for her, because in the end they had left her to be alone too. How could anyone do this to her? What had she done to deserve it?

Delphine stopped trying to reach out, she had no clue what had made her try in the first place. She stared dully into the space in front of. She would resign to being alone again, for hours upon hours, days upon days, weeks upon weeks, and finally years upon years.

Glancing down to her arm, she watched with disinterest as her limb became gnarled with age. Her skin cracked as her muscles seemed to deteriorate almost instantaneously under her watchful gaze. From her fingertips, skin and tissue began to break off, turning into dust as it feel into the emptiness underneath her. The decay spread quickly, through her arm, torso, even her face… until there was nothing left. No one was there even to remember her for who she had been - no one else’s eyes to witness the dust twirl in space, carried by a sudden and unexplainable breeze, until even that was gone.