I have often asked myself what it really is that I feel when I look at her.

There is pain, a sensation like a thousand knives stabbing my heart over and over again, whenever I look at her and she looks back at me. I would endure it, just so I could continue seeing her, but I think she feels it too. I do not want her to suffer. But I suffer when I do not see her just the same.

There is regret. It is a monstrous creature with a thousand arms, and it wraps them around me and makes it hard to breathe. I still don't know who she is, but I am certain that I would be willing to do anything for her, anything to protect her, anything, just to see her smile. But the creature whispers to me, and it tells me that I have already failed her. Or she wouldn't have come here.

There is yearning. She is like the moon and the stars, a beckoning, alluring call from infinitely far away. Her light is silver and soothing, and it chases away the shadows in my mind, turning the dark forest into a place of tranquility and peace. And my yearning is a fire, violent and consuming, and stronger than anything I have ever felt before. It dulls the pain, and the regret and the fear. It burns like a sun, harsh and unrelenting, and scorching what it touches. How paradoxical, to think that the blazing fire of this sun is just a pale reflection of the shimmer of moonlight that ignited it. I am afraid of that fire. I am afraid of hurting her. And the creature whispers to me, and makes me wonder if perhaps I already did.

And then I feel the pull.

Something sitting in the darkest corners of my mind stretches out its crooked tendrils. It reaches out, coils itself around my mind and just... pulls. But it doesn't attempt to draw me in. Rather, it attempts to haul itself out.

It is a horrible sensation, and it makes me wonder if I truly want to see what is hidden there, in the deepest depths of the abyss of my mind.