Her heartbeat was in her ears, a deafening throb, a bass drum set into the rhythm of her paws. Each strides ate up the earth and still it was not enough, there was not enough land to run across. Caithe could never get as far as she needed to go. Her lungs filled and emptied, and filled again, burning with each new breath. The world snatched up by her dark eyes, was nothing more than fleeting pictures of places and things she had no desire to stop and see. A doe breaking across her path here, a river cutting out of the wilderness toward her and away again there—all of it motion and emotion that she refused to process. Muscle quivered with fatigue, acid building up in the fibers that strung her aching bones together. Nerves fired a single message to her clouded mind, Stop! Stop! and the reply came down the telegraph lines as No. No. No. She tried to run herself to death, but the desire for death was not there, not really. She wanted to live, but not to feel, never to feel again.

You’re a beautiful soul, my love. You feel everything with your whole self… How strange those words were now as something consumed her that was quite unlike the excitement that had overflowed the day those syllables were murmured. Caithe could not outrun the wretched sorrow that clenched its jaws around her throat. A foam had formed at the corners of her mouth, and her respirations became labored as the resolve to continue crumbled. Her head ached from fighting back the wailing between her ears, and her empty stomach churned with bile as though she’d swallowed the foulest thing she could find.