Transitions

None of it was familiar. And yet it was. There, just over there, that boulder with the disquieting shape. She had seen that boulder before. In a dream? Surely just so. It couldn’t possibly be the same, anyway, not if what the strangers said was true. That was too much time. What had the little gnome man said? A thousand years? More? It didn’t make sense. The world spun beneath her feet, and she could only barely keep her footing.
 
But it must have made sense to some part of her, some part smothered deep inside, alive despite years (a thousand years? Truly?) of deprivation. Else why would she have gone with them? Why would she be on this madcap dash to…where? She didn’t even know. More than once the weight of too much knowledge too fast nearly made her knees buckle. Somehow she kept apace. Somehow she found her voice to shout at the angels (angels! There were multiple of them!), though she barely heard herself over the blood raging in her ears as if her head were thrust under a waterfall. It was surreal.
 
And how surreal was it for them to witness their new companion shrivel down from the lithe, vital aspect she had been into something very nearly ghoulish. Indeed, her skin once radiant with an inner glow was now the pallor of near-death, haunted by shadows that sank into unflattering angles. Her golden hair, once lustrous and flowing, was gone, rendered to colorless stubble. She did not lose much if any height at 5’8”, and yet she seemed smaller. Her robes, though simple as they had been, tattered into flimsy rags.
 
Truly she could have been a different woman entirely. Except her eyes. As wide and frightened as they were, they were still hers, a shade of gray that would match any tumultuous spring storm.