As she watches the ground beneath her feet stretch its way to eternity, a young girl wearing a red ribbon in her dark hair sighs.

She remembers the grandeur of days long past, days anticipated waiting for- days and dreams and the hope of a future she was sure would come. Not so much anymore. As the yellowed grass rolled in waves towards the vast horizon, the sun is sucked towards the shadows of nights long flown, so far away. The dreams she'd harbored inside her had tossed her sable ringlets to the clouds. That wistful look that once lighted her eyes had now become something akin to a dark pain lost on those around her.

Not that they would understand.

Elevated above her world of city-scapes and smog machines, well-dressed madams and punk drag-queens, she puts a hand to the shadowed trunk of a great tree- oak? sycamore? beech?- looking downwards to stare at her feet.

Again, the girl sighs as another day fell. Pushing her hand away from her tree, she descends her weedy hill. Shedding false pretenses, she makes her way through knee-high grass, carefully picking her way through back to the bustling city she called home. Though hope was shattered, resolve dissolved,she had no place else to go. If days and dreams and future came, perhaps then- but still, too early to decide.

Entering the seedy outskirts of town, she untied her ribbon, red as hearts-blood and left it to the wind.