A fragment of a tale

  She sits in silence, staring at the mist as it swirls through the garden outside.  The room is sparsely furnished with a table and chair and a narrow bed across one wall.  It is her prison.  She stands and she paces from wall to wall and back again, to and fro until you can almost see the groove being worn in the bare floor boards where her naked feet pass.  A hundred, a thousand times she paces back and forth, then she stops, flopping listlessly onto the hard mattress of the bed and turns her head to stare from the window at the mist once more.  She is waiting.  Not even she knows what she waits for, but wait she does.  She has been there for centuries it seems, seconds rolling slowly by into hour long minutes and year long hours.  Her impatience is palpable, but still she waits.  The door is open, but the corridor beyond is dark and cold, unlit and unfriendly, and she is afraid to step beyond the boundaries of her room.  So she sits and waits, and watches as the mist curls around the garden. 
  Night falls, and with it; total darkness.  She lies upon the bed and closes her eyes, but sleep will not come.  She has lost count of the nights she has spent like this, lying still, her eyes shut to the dark outside, only the darkness of her own head for company.  Her thoughts are slow and heavy and make no sense, just swirls of pattern in her mind.  When she opens her eyes it will be light again, and the mist will curl around the garden outside.  And days go past, fragmented by the dreamless nights, always the same, like recycled time.  She sits and waits, and watches, she paces and lies upon the bed, and closes her eyes when darkness comes, and the mist curls around the garden outside her window.  Nothing changes.  And so she waits.