"Libra!" The child echoes her sister's name in a frozen void. Each faded plea crawls into the darkness without a sound to return. Alone and afraid, the child returns to her feet in a cage of her own creation. Looking ahead into her bleak future, she continues to chase the pulsing knocks beating through the cave. The mouth she had entered has faded into a distant speck of white, but the child is too far in to reach it again. Her head spins as her blood freezes under her veins. Her breaths are short and swift, her eyes falling under their lids, and her feet are ready to fail once more.
She tightens her grip around the bear she holds and continues to fight against the numbness in her body. She reaches her hand to the walls of the cave to help carry her weight and feels the damp of bleeding ice run through her skin. Squinting to the crevice ahead, she notices the ice dripping down her wrist. She pulls her hand back, takes a step away, and glances at her palm. A blanket of crimson rolls gently over her hand.
The child screams and jolts further from the wall ahead. She runs her palm against the fabric of her pants and keeps her fingers tight around her plush. Looking up with what little sight she has left, she discovers this crimson has scattered across the ice of the cave. Like a bleeding virus, the color of blood has blended into the ice. Tears of fear begin to crawl from the gaze of the child. She looks further for a source of the color. With every step into the abyss, the crimson of before fades into a sable tar that obscures her path. She reaches out her hand again, although afraid she'll touch something less frozen, and fears that her sister may already be smeared upon her clothes.
She keeps chasing it. The sound of her sister's heartbeat. It still thumps, louder than ever, and it doesn't cease. She must still be alive.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
The pulses rage through her as if they had come from herself. As the color around her fades into nothing, her entire body follows the same journey, and she begins to trip over the abandoned weight of her body. In moments, her entire being is swallowed by the depths of the cave. Her legs give in, she collapses to the ground again, and drags her limp, small body across the ground.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
The voice of death melts into her eardrums. The throbs of her sister's heart begin to silence her own. She keeps crawling, despite her condition, and chases everlasting life in her path. She can see her freedom reaching out to her. Her eyes close in solace, the thumps echoing away, and her body gives in to the cold. Her breaths slow into the silence. For a moment, she feels the agony of her past fade with her senses. The weight of her body has been lifted. The warmth of her blood remains no longer. The walls of this crevice may finally take another wave of crimson. Once again, the child is frozen in time.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
"Libra," the child calls out. In the midst of her final breaths, she hears the echoes of her voice return to her. Her eyes seal as she rests her head against the void, but open slowly within the depths of her mind. Lost in a new world, she visits the fractures of her memory and discovers her sister across the frozen bridge to the afterlife. She takes a final, deep breath against the cold and accepts her fate in peace.