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She ran her hand through the murky sand, picking up the wet clumps that lingered just below the dry, crumbly surface. A sandcastle was a weird thing to be building in the middle of the Waste, especially as far from the shore as she was, but Talitha Lykoi really had nothing else to do but succumb to her haunting memories yet again. She didn't want to see that face frozen in snarls of ecstasy again while she screamed inside her own head, and so she had distracted herself. She did not hum as she normally would, or pretend her fingers were people walking around the castle; she built it in silence, decorated it with rocks in silence, and kicked it down in silence so she could start over. It was the only bliss she'd found in a while, the only thing that made her feel like she could sleep if she tried, or made her believe she could be hungry again.
In reality, her body wanted to live. She flagged horribly from exhaustion, and her stomach was often on fire from hunger because she only ate when people were watching, not having the appetite for anything else, but that was enough to keep her alive. She clung to life but reached out for death; the two were miles and miles apart, but she could see it in her mind like a passing of a baby from one set of hands to another. She was a baby sucked dry of will and desire. Her hands collapsed delicately around another clump of wet sand, forming it into a ball and moving it to rest delicately on the top of the tower she had just built up not too long ago. Her eyes took in the half rebuilt sandcastle, her mind looking desperately for ways to make it better than it had been before.
She sucked her breath in as she placed her foot gently against the side of it, this time not intent in collapsing it, and allowed her toes to sink easily into the side of the sand. When she removed it, a perfect mold of her young foot remained on the side of the sand castle's wide base. She couldn't smile at her half finished creation, but she could stare at the place her foot had been, knowing she approved but also that she was unable to show it.