"Who are you?" Aubrey whispered, fingers reaching out to touch the shadowy figure but touching nothing. "What are you?"

Her magic still hadn't returned, though they'd been walking for what felt like hours. She wasn't even sure if someone else was there or if she was all alone and imagining the shadow being. Her eyes had adjusted to the forest's darkness, but the figure remained as indistinct as ever. 

She wasn't entirely sure why she was even following the figure. For all Aubrey knew, she could be marching towards her death. 

The shadow stayed quiet. Aubrey sighed, the sound quickly swallowed by the empty night. It hadn't been this silent the first night she'd spent in the woods. That night it had been loud and cluttered, filled with animal screams and unnatural howls and a sound Aubrey recognized from right before she'd been banished—tearing flesh. 

But this... this was hollow. 

Aubrey preferred the screams. 

As she made her way through the woods, Aubrey noticed that the trees were starting to thin. Every so often, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of motion, but nothing seemed to approach her. It was as if she was untouchable. 

She wondered distantly if her magic had anything to do with it.

Here.

Aubrey's eyes widened. "What's here?" She asked frantically. 

The figure held still, and for the first time, Aubrey had a clear idea of what it looked like. 

It was about Aubrey's height, with slender limbs and a softly curved physique. It seemed to swallow all the light around it. Aubrey couldn't make out any features or even any colours aside from a solid, unwavering jet black. 

The shadow stepped towards her. 

Aubrey sucked in a breath but held still. 

The figure passed straight through her. 

A flurry of papers swirled through the air. Aubrey laughed as a small scrap tangled in her hair. She pulled it out and studied it. In smeared, faded silver ink, written in faded cursive, Aubrey could vaguely make out the first couple lines of a love poem. 

She studied it with interest for a few moments before suddenly realizing where she was. 

She wasn't in the forest anymore—that was for sure. 

Aubrey bit her lip, letting the paper scrap flutter back into the wind. She glanced around, surprised to find herself back in that peculiar dreamland. Sparkling sand. Smooth driftwood. Transparent people racing up and down the beach. 

Somehow, she'd fallen asleep.

She scrambled to gather her memories from earlier. The silvery moonlight glancing off the tree trunks, the shadowed silhouette, the way her magic had faded...

And then here she was.

What had the shadow done to her? Was she trapped somehow in this dreamed-up world? Was she dead? Was this the afterlife? 

Aubrey took a deep breath of salty air. She shivered and pulled back the sleeves of her tunic reluctantly. As she'd been expecting, her magic was gone once again. 

A slim, wiry figure ran down the beach in a blur of black and silver, giggling and almost bumping into her. Startled, Aubrey spun around and watched it run away. 

"Hello?" She called out reluctantly. 

The figure stopped maybe twenty feet away and swivelled to face her. "Hello?" It repeated.

Aubrey did her best to look the figure up and down, but somehow she just... couldn't. Her attention kept slipping away. She could spot it indirectly out of the corner of her eye, but the moment she tried to look it head-on, its image wavered like a mirage. 

She started to walk towards it tentatively. "What is this place?" She asked softly. 

The figure's feet danced lightly across the ground as it stepped backwards, maintaining the distance between itself and Aubrey. "What is this place?" It echoed. 

Aubrey shook her head, exasperated by the dream. She didn't have time for whatever tricks her subconscious was playing. And yet while Aubrey was normally pretty good at waking herself up from her dreams, she couldn't quite seem to snap herself from this one. 

She sighed. Might as well give into the whimsy, she supposed. 

"How do I get out of here?" She asked. 

The figure tilted its head, and Aubrey almost imagined it was smiling. "How do I get out of here?"

"You're useless, you know that?" She scowled, turning away from the figure and starting to walk in the opposite direction. 

She had to wake up eventually. Well, unless she was dead. But she wasn't dead. Probably. 

Another laugh, and then the figure was standing directly in front of Aubrey, almost as if it had blinked into existence just in front of her. 

Aubrey shrieked. 

The figure was the mirror image of her.

"You're useless, you know that?" It—she—mocked, a smile crossing her lips. 

"No, no, no..." Aubrey turned around again, rubbing her temples as she ran across the beach. The bruise on her foot throbbed with each step. 

Hands as cold as ice closed around her wrist.