A leaf falls, a drop of rain lands in the ocean, a star dies. None of this matters to me as long as the quiet song of your breath stirs the dark. It's been a tall glass of iced tea and a bottle of water (boring) for me since you fell asleep, and I've been thinking about all those times, so distant, so long ago, that shaped you into who you are, that I saw a glimpse of in your eyes before you told me anything, that I experienced alongside you. The time you risked a friendship to save a life and lost that friendship. The time you lost yourself from the cradle to the grave and had to drag yourself back on the path a full year later. The moment you broke up with your toxic ex and built yourself back up again.

The trees around us sway gently in the breeze, unlike the larger ones we encountered while hiking to our current location. The air is significantly easier on the lungs than the polluted air back home. The temperature is just right, slightly cool but not cold and definitely not freezing.

I hear the distant chopping of wood. I thought we were alone in these woods, but the knowledge that we aren't the only ones here is slightly comforting to my loneliness, which I've been feeling since you lost yourself in your dreams. Ancient, towering trees hitting the ground with loud thumps. He or she or whatever the person chopping down those trees identified as was surely efficient, as I heard the trees go down with the rhythm of my heart. Thump thump, thump thump. Their speed quickened as the sound got closer and the sun went down further. The thumps were no longer that of the aged oak trees whose roots we stumbled through to get to this clearing, rather they were that of the fragile birches that surrounded us. I wondered how much wood they would require before heading back home. It was getting dark now, and I was growing quite tired. I yawned and the thumps stopped for just long enough for me to notice before resuming. The rhythmic thumps became a lullaby, and I fell asleep.

I awoke suddenly to the sound of you screaming, and the sound of an ax crushing your skull. Before I could react, I was put back to sleep, never to wake up.