There is a place in my mind where I go to when I feel sad and lonely.

It's a place of light surrounded by darkness, like a moonlit clearing in a forest in the middle of night. I can create things there, just through my thoughts. I watch my creations unfold from nothing, and collapse back into nothing, like fleeting flowers that bloom in a heartbeat and wither again immediately. When I close my eyes, I can see that place before me even now. It is my haven, my sanctuary, and mine alone – where nobody can get to me and hurt me.

Sometimes though, when I'm there, my mind creates something without me really thinking of it. It's as if there is something hidden inside of me that I don't even know about myself. Something incomprehensible, deep and mysterious. And on occasion, I get a glimpse of that secret world. Concealed behind a thick veil of conscious thought, it is only revealed to me in moments of complete serenity and calm, when my mind wanders so far that it does not seem to be inside of my head any longer at all.

The girl is one of those creations. She lives in that place, but only when I visit it in my dreams. I can never make out her face, but I've seen it before, I am certain of it. And yet it is the only thing about her that I can never give any shape to.

Whenever I meet her there, on that moonlit clearing in the dark forest of my thoughts,
I find myself smiling. And I always know that she is smiling back at me, even if I cannot see her face. She is beautiful, and there is a bittersweet sadness to her smile. How do I know all that without seeing it? I cannot say. All I know is that looking at her almost tears me apart, and yet I do it anyway, in the hope of one day finally seeing her.

There's something peculiar about her. The way she moves, raises her head and looks at me, with those eyes, that - I don't know. I have never seen her eyes. But there is something about them. And when she looks at me, it's like she sees right through me, all the way to the very bottom of my soul. As if she knows something about me that I don't know myself.

I like to pretend that she is real, and once in a while I try to talk to her. But she never answers. Of course she doesn't. She's just in my mind, nothing but a dream. Nonetheless, I like to imagine what her voice would sound like, and what she would say, if she could talk.

But she never talks, only looks at me, with those strange eyes and a smile that is overcast by a sadness so profound that it violently tugs at my heart. It makes me want to hold her  close and tell her everything will be alright. Yet every time I dare to stretch out my hands to touch her, she shatters, scatters into a million pieces and is blown away with a gust of wind, like the petals of just another withering flower.

I wake up crying from these dreams sometimes. And yet I smile. I don't know what any of it means. All I know is, when I see her, I want to believe that I am still alive.

_____________

A.N.
I was unable to find a proper version of the original chapter soundtrack anywhere on youtube, but if you have Spotify, you can find the song I had in mind here:
'Improve' by Daughter
https://open.spotify.com/track/6i8dfNtIWm3uR8WG2IIDjq?si=bW61CkQBSp6XeReeQRHMCw