She fell asleep at her keyboard. The clickity-clack-clack of fingers against the cool plastic was all too soothing to her sleep deprived senses – an obvious product of the increasingly incessant procrastination that was beginning to wear away at her previously religious method of study. All plans and concerns for the night she had yet to attend to fell to nothingness as she laid her head in folded arms and let heavy eyes fall shut.

When she opened her eyes, she wasn't in front of the luminous screen of her laptop any longer. The dimly lit and empty library around her had disappeared, replaced with a clean, crisp sunlight and a sea of faces— unfamiliar, inhuman— alien, even— with soulless black eyes and tentacles protruding from their faces. Before her was a scroll with line after line of unreadable words that all blended into the next with a swirl of foreign consonants and vowels. Eyes of no color stared at her expectantly, and she felt her own eyes widen, throat closing up and the cool jibes she so often delivered among friends now hard to come by.

It was evident that escape was impossible as she turned around on her little pedestal; strange, unblinking faces filled her line of sight as far as she could see. A voice that wasn't her own echoed in the recesses of her mind, slow and taunting and urging her to utter even one word, but she could not breathe. Just the mere thought of speaking was carbon monoxide to her lungs, suffocating and dizzying and not letting even a single sound out of the mouth that was supposed to be addressing the masses.

The sunlight no longer looked clean and crisp, turning a sickening green as her vision began to cloud with the cold darkness of panic. The unfamiliar faces began to harden, staring at her with judgmental stares.

Sunlight? What sunlight?

There was none; only the ever-growing cold and dark of nightmares surrounded her, submerging her like the icy cold of a midnight trip into the unforgiving ocean, and she could feel tears welling up in her eyes. She slammed them shut, not quite ready for what she feared would come next, when a warm hand grabbed her own, sending the darkness scurrying away quicker than a mouse from a feral cat.

Inky blackness bled away, warm light seeping in even past her closed eyelids. Cautiously, she opened an eye, immediately blinded by the brilliant radiance surrounding her. She could've sworn she saw the most striking flash of blue before the light became too much and she had to closer her eyes once again, but her mind only dwelled on it for so long before her hand felt cold again and the light crept away.

A cool breeze incited a shiver down her spine, and she opened her eyes to see the ocean. The dark waters gleamed grey under the cold light of the moon, round edges still managing to seem sharp and unforgiving. Waves lapped at her bare toes, the soft caress of the tides every bit as ambivalent to the cold, unforgiving waters as the hard edges to the rounded moon. When she inhaled, the sharp scent of the sea was barely there, overwhelmed by the morbid smell of death and sand.

A lone heartbeat nearly stopped as soft ebony fabric swished around turning legs and bright eyes were met with the sight of unflying ravens, unmoving and sprawled across the beach haphazardly.

A soft tha-thump barely sounded over the shushing of the waves and the girl knelt, grains of sand digging into her knees, with her face buried in her hands. She was stiff as an ancient oak and unmoving as a mountain, lurking empty and alone as the tide slowly bit away at her hardened surface. The mountain heard no soft crunch of sand underfoot and stayed still and unfeeling until a familiar warmth found itself resting lightly atop her shoulder, melting away at the cool, stone surface.

She started, suddenly brought back to life by the touch, and finger pressed softly against her lip, catching the startled gasp that threatened to tumble from her mouth. The hand, with thin fingers delicate and gentle, pulled her back to her feet, supporting the girl when her knees fell weak.

"Open your eyes," a calming voice urged, smooth and sincere. "Nothing bad is here."

"N-no," a whispering voice choked out, breathless and weakly insistent. "I cannot."

She heard a shift and a shuffle, and a hand moved from her lips to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Warm breath fanned across her own frozen features and she could feel a face looking up at her, but still, her bright eyes remained shut.

"Trust me," the voice insisted, undeterred by any stubbornness. "I wouldn't lie to you."

Bright eyes fluttered open, the first thing flooding their view being a striking blue with a depth and radiance unmatched by any the girl had ever seen before. The colors blinked— once, twice— and the face before her grinned, broad and endearingly crooked. The beach behind him was clean and white, and a shaky laugh escaped from thin lips.

"Told you," the boy said, and a small smile found its way onto the girl's lips. He released her shoulders with a quick, "Come on!" dashing down the sands and beckoning for her to follow. She was quick to do so, catching up to his flighty strides with ease, laughing breathily was he grabbed her wrists and twirled the both of them about in the salty waters. His earnest laughter in itself felt like a fresh reminder of how to live all over again, and she drank in the lesson with an eager smile.

Nothing could have prepared her for the sudden way a wave came crashing upon them, sweeping her away and throwing the pair asunder.

The air was knocked out of her lungs as she rolled into a field of grass, tumbling and careening through the tall plants. When she sat up, the grass served as a wall, towering above her head and writhing every which way in the tumultuous winds. The location, she did not recognize – a fact she was beginning to accept more with the capricious, migratory nature of her recent travels.

Standing up, the girl was buffeted with sharp winds that whipped her golden hair about her face violently. She was but a lost pedestrian in the maze of grass and unforgiving winds, stumbling through the endless fields in search of a head of ebony or two striking blue eyes that could light up any room.

Her wandering could have lasted for minutes or days or months, but she was numbed by the force of the wind against her skin and had no grasp on such inane matters. By the time she reached a tall oak, bare and leafless among the grass, her fingers shook but she couldn't feel a thing. Tired and near hopeless, she stared up at the chocolate-brown bark before reaching two pale hands out and pulling herself up, slowly and surely.

From the top, the girl could see an ocean of swirling greens in every imaginable shade. The winds threatened to throw her off, but she refused, clinging to the branches of the regal oak as bright eyes scanned the lush seas. A blotch of familiar ebony caught her attention, and bright eyes widened, sparking with excitement. She shouted at him from her position among the clouds, and his head turned to face her.

A brilliant grin pulled at his lips as ran closer and closer with each passing second, waving at her eagerly. She removed her hands from the tree to return the gesture. It wasn't soon before the winds had caught up to her, and the girl was swept off her feet to the ground, only able to let her eyes freeze up in shock before her world went black.

"Whoa, watch yourself!" a voice exclaimed. The girl blinked groggily, feeling a strangely familiar hand on her shoulder and another wrapped around her wrist. "You nearly fell off your chair there!"

She stumbled up, blinking the bleary sleep from her eyes and dusting the nonexistent dirt off her long ebony skirt.

"You alright?" the concerned voice asked. The girl blinked hard, sparing a passing glance at the laptop she had left open upon the desk. It was still glowing weakly, and she shut it with a sigh. She replied with a simple, "I am fine; thank you," as she turned around to face him.

When her eyes met his, she was instantly ensnared by two of the most striking blue irises she never thought she'd see again.

"Okay; that's good," the ebony-haired boy replied with a warm smile. He picked up her bag from the floor and held it out to her. "I'm John, by the way. It was such a coincidence that I was here to catch you before you fell, huh?"

The girl replied with a likewise smile. "Rose." She picked up her laptop and slid it into the bag before lifting the strap onto her shoulder. "And I prefer the term kismet."