The air was hot and humid, causing wisps of her hair to cling to her face. Beads of red tinged sweat rolled down her pale skin. The forest was strangely empty, devoid of life. The quiet made her shiver despite the heat of the air around her. She remembered the deserts she�d left behind, where she�d buried herself below the sand by day. Perhaps she should have stayed there, cradled in Mother Earth�s tender embrace. Ah, yes. Sink into the sand and then.....what? Wait a thousand years for something to dig her up? Force her to the surface a mummified wrath starved for blood? Just as *he* had centuries ago? She could still see those last few hours, frozen in her mind forever like snapshots. Stifling heat as the prop plane droned on, sweat running down her dirt streaked face, a child screaming in a fever-dream. Bumpy touch down as the sun set. Stale air blasting her face as she cracked the sealed tomb and descended, to death and life anew.
The moist jungle began to yield to the sea. She came out onto a beach of smooth polished stones. The ocean was shrouded in fog, so that the world seemed to drop off not twenty feet out to sea. Lightning streaked across the sky and thunder boomed, echoing across the water. It was primeval, and fitting, she decided. That the end of the world seemed much like the beginning made a complete circle. Perhaps, in a way, this was the beginning. The beginning of something new for her, after living so long in the dark folds of the night. Rain began to patter down, washing her body of the grime it had accumulated,