A beam of light flickered through the window, partially cracked. It illuminated the fine hairs on a caramel-skinned arm, matted wet and streaked with black lines of makeup. A dainty hand dangled off the edge of the bed, knuckles cracked and bloody, fingernails chipped of their smooth pearl finish and left ragged, raw. Long drags of scratches cascaded from a slender wrist past a rounded forearm, all the way up to the smooth curve of a bare shoulder. A wisp of cream fabric fluttered in the gradual ebb and flow of a breeze through the window, light and fast like the wing of a butterfly, over the slope of a neck.

In the stillness of the morning light, the room was at peace. The chimeras of wood and dirt and ore transformed by human hands into something unnatural -- a desk, a lamp, a set of gauzy curtains -- receded back into their primordial upbringing. Masked by silence and the glow of a rising sun, these accoutrements of society sighed like trees bending it wind, swayed like leaves drifting from branches, waved like a running spring between slick rocks. Outside the cracked window, a bird began a bright song, trilling in high notes until another echoing song called back.

It was beautiful, and empty. Only in this absence of humanity could the room be so perfect. Only in this microcosm of a dream-state could the world hang so effortlessly between nature and something else, something unknown. How long would this moment last? How long could a moment of perfect serenity be suspended?

The hand on the bed twitched. Fallon lifted her chin from the eyelet lace of the duvet cover. The embroidered edges scraped across a purpling bruise. Her mind was hazy, and she surfaced slowly from her unconsciousness, peeling back layer by layer like a girl ripping petals from a flower. Here, in this state of being and unbeing, she was at rest. Her heart did not flutter in her chest. No sobs wracked her broken frame. There was just the breeze through the window, the warmth of the risen sun, and the birds harmonizing in the trees.

One magenta eye cracked open and landed on the wet smear of tears and snot and misery slowly drying on her arm. The tiny thread of peace snapped. Fallon remembered her life and her losses, as if they had all happened in that same instant. A sob shattered her chapped lips, and the teenager curled into a ball on her side, cradling her knees to her chest. One hand opened and closed, opened and closed, opened and closed -- grasping feebly for the henshin pen that was not there.