I stare at the door. It's 10 minutes past 9 and you still haven't come.

Should I miss you if you don't? Difficult question.

Do I miss you? Different question.

As my thoughts start drifting away I am thinking about the past. Not our past. We have none. Probably never will have one. But that's for the better.

No. I am thinking about my past. I am thinking about that dark, heavy shadow that follows me around everywhere I go.

Will I escape?

I am such a cliché.

After everything that time has done to me it seems only legitimate to be killing time.

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The mind-ship. It is flying through space. Through a space.

Emily is seated on the throne, Davka and Simmalou to her right and Shannax Lucy to her left.

They are watching the emotions outside the ship. Emotions have taken the form of colors: free colors, moving freely, reaching out to each other, mixing, ever-connected, and exploding from time to time.

It's amazingly beautiful to watch.

The Alliance (Emily, Simmalou, Davka and Shannax Lucy) is gazing at them in awe.

Simmalou speaks first: "You know it's only because of the filter, right?" He says to Emily.

Emily nods.

"Shut up!" Davka responds very angrily.

"We are watching this through the 'beauty-filter'. It is one of many filters the glass of the mind-ship, our perception, is capable of. That's just a fact. There is no need to be angry at Simmalou for pointing that out." Emily speaks strangely calmly, even cold. Especially when considering that she is only a 9-year-old.

"He's a cynic. You shouldn't listen to him." Davka responds in a similarly cold way.

"Why do you need to label me?" Lou asks her. His voice, cold as it is most of the time.

He turns to Emily again. Emily, who has lost her memory. Emily, who might have only just appeared here right now.

"You don't exist. You can't exist." He says to her.

"Of course she exists!" Shannax Lucy and Davka protest.

"I told you he was a cynic." Davka adds.

"She is a 9-year-old girl. She is naïve. There isn't a 9-year-old that isn't naïve. Do you really believe such a person could be the same as me?"

Nobody responds to his question so Simmalou continues: "That's why she can't exist. Me and her, we cannot be the same person. She cannot exist, not really."

"And yet I am here." Emily says.

"Let's give you a background-story, shall we?" Simmalou asks with great enthusiasm.

The mind-ship travels to the past.

The Alliance watches Emily's childhood bedroom. She is just about to go to sleep when an angel appears next to her bed. She is stunned by the bright light that goes from him.

"I came here to grant you one wish." The creature of light speaks.

"One wish?" Emily laughs nervously and childishly, just like a normal little girl.

She thinks for one moment. The words that leave her mouth seem very wise, yet fitting for a girl so young:

"I wish for a heart that doesn't desire evil."

"Are you sure?" The angel is delighted.

"Yes."

He snaps his fingers, stardust falls on Emily's head and bed. Seconds later, the angel has disappeared. Emily will chose to believe that her short encounter with this angel was only a dream.

Years go by, things change. "Life happens" a cynic might say.

"Life happens." Simmalou says as they watch Emily's parents sell her to a brothel.

"Life happens." Simmalou says as they watch the little girl work her first customers.

"Life happens." Simmalou says as they watch all of her former friends turn away ashamed as she walks the streets.

She's living on a desert-planet now. Who cares about the name? It's a tale of the mind.

It takes a long time until the angel appears to her again. She concludes that she has now finally gone crazy. The angel announces that every wish she makes in the following week will come true. She doesn't even consider the possibility. She is dreaming. She knows that angels don't exist.

One day she meets a man at the market. He is holding his heart in his hand.

"Why are you holding your heart in your hand?" The little girl asks.

"I want everyone to know from the moment of meeting me that I am not defined by my heart but by my mind. That's why I took it out!"

"Such a strange man you are!" Little Emily says.

"You think so? But please don't misunderstand me. My heart is nice, but it just has a few defects. It's falling in love too quickly, it's presumptuous and it's judgmental. Please don't get me wrong. I do have a nice little heart. And very beautiful. A very nice little heart. You see?"

He stretches out his hand to let Emily gaze at his heart.

"Maybe he just doesn't know how to use it correctly." Davka says inside the mind-ship.

"Interesting." Emily giggles.

"Well I thought you wouldn't understand fully since you are, well... just a little girl. You're supposed to be presumptuous and naïve! And that's fine!"

"Haha." Emily outside the ship says. "Naïve? Me? Not really. I've been fucked over by almost everyone I ever trusted, including my parents. I'm really more of a cynic. But I do have moments of naivety. Like glimpses of light."

"Oh that's..."

Emily rudely interrupts the man. "But you still couldn't separate yourself from your heart. You always need to carry it around, and isn't is still pumping all your blood through your veins?"

"Yes but..."

"So how can you think that it doesn't define you?"

"Well I..." The man didn't know what to say anymore.

"I think I'm gonna dig myself a hole now."

"Do that." Emily replies.

The man grabs a shovel to dig himself a hole in which he would escape from all the looks of the bypassing people that he would now deem to be judging him.

When Emily comes back later to look at the man who is now sitting in his hole of shame she asks him:

"Now have people stopped judging you?"

"No, not really." The man answers.

"Maybe you should just give up." Little Emily says.

"Yes. Maybe I should." The man says and decides to stick his head in the sand.

Emily smiles sadistically as she leaves.

The week has passed and the angel reappears.

"Congratulations! All of your wishes have come true. You do now have an evil heart and a lot of money. You will never have to work in the brothel again. You will always be free. You will always be safe."

As Emily realizes it wasn't just a dream she suddenly brakes down crying.

"What is it?" The angel asks.

"I didn't wish for anything that could make me happy. I didn't wish for my parent's love. I didn't wish for any love. I had lost all hope and now I have nothing."

The mind-ship returns to its former position where the Alliance can gaze at the beautiful emotions again.

Everyone is silent now.

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As you enter the room I forbid myself to smile. I hadn't hoped that you would come anymore.

I wished it didn't matter to me. Yet here I sit. Hanging onto my glimpses of light and carefully hiding.