Hope

She still didn't know how she'd wound up in this place. She couldn't even see well enough to tell what place it was. The world around looked the same, but something was different, a haze had fallen, distorting everything, turning crisp lines blurry. The sounds were different, somehow muffled. Every sense twisted, tainted, hid reality from her mind, pushed her farther from the truth, and yet, in her mind, she knew her blindness, her deafness, her muteness, and even that nothing she touched was as she felt it. Her cries for help went unheard, she couldn't even voice her needs, how could she make sense of what she could not understand? How could she grasp the truth knowing that no perception could be trusted?

Then she knew that she was falling, flailing, fighting against the dark maw at the bottom of the great abyss that was sucking her down. She gasped for breath, breathing only the deathly water that was drowning her, and then she felt the little tingle, a tiny whisper from her heart, and in her mind she inhaled the sweet perfume of a thousand roses, held her breath through a thousand sunsets, and gasped at the enormity of a thousand night skies. In so doing, she filled her lungs, her fingers and her toes, her entire being with new life, with the sweet breath of love and hope and faith, and she was no longer drowning. She was soaring.