User:Warriorfan123/Stuff

Sleep evades the prisoner throughout the night, the warm, black threads dancing tantalizingly out of her reach. Her eyelids are heavy but they will not shut. The stone wall is a poor substitute for a pillow, and she dares not lay her head down in the straw. Prison straw is not known for its cleanliness- though why does it matter to her now?

Eventually, the prisoner gives up on sleep- rising to her feet and turning to face the barred opening in the wall that faced outside. The prisoner stands on her tiptoes as far as she can tolerate the pain, since her ankles are swollen and chaffed from the rope wound around them. Her nails are bloody as they clutch the bars, scarlet droplets mixing with the rust already there. It will surely kill her- and oh, how she can laugh at the irony of that. The prisoner presses her face as close to the window as she could, tilting her head back to bask in the slight, cool breeze ghosting through the bars. Buildings block her view, but if she tilts her head back at just the right angle, she can see slivers of sky. Deep black, so deep it is blue. A deep blue stretching wide and fast, stars speckled through it like holes in child’s sewing. Who poked the stars in the sky? the prisoner wonders to herself. Because she’d like to ask them how to poke holes in prison walls- if they could poke through the sky, they could certainly poke through stone- - but what if the sky really was soft- - you idiot, she snorts loudly. She really is going delirious, isn't she?

Still, the prisoner stretches up towards the bars, fighting against the pain. At last she can hold it no longer. With a hoarse cry, she crumbles, fall cushioned by the straw beneath her. A strangled grunt of pain slips from her mouth as the rope twists and rubs against the raw wound it has already created. The prisoner, facing up towards the stone ceiling above her, suddenly has no will to stand back up. There is too much pain, too much throbbing in her ankles and her head. And given her circumstances, she is allowed a bit of moping and melodrama, isn’t she?

So the prisoner lies there, not really thinking, trying to count the cracks in the ceiling and how probable it would be for the entire structure to collapse. First the castle turrets, then the cracks would spread down through the building and across the courtyard. There would be a pause- one of those pauses where the whole world stills in motion- and then the cracks would split the world apart-

“ Get up,” a voice growls, followed but a jingling and metallic screech. At once, the prisoner’s mind plummets back down to reality. “ Oh, come on, y’want me to do it for ya?”

It’s only a dream, it must be, she thinks against the hardness spreading through her stomach. “ I c’n… please…” her mouth is thick and feels uncomfortably hot.

With a huge sigh, the man bends down. A large hand clamps on her shoulder and yanks her up. The prisoner cries out in agony as the rope digs into her ankles, and her head pounds with a vengeance as she stands.

“ You good?” the man grunts, and she nods numbly in response. “ Let’s get a move on, then.”

Moping and melodrama, she thinks as he binds her hands behind her back. ''They’ll make a fine gown for me. I can make my veil from regret, and cover my hair in the flowers of should-haves and would-haves. Only the best, after all, for my dying day.''