6:28

A dark and moonless night, far from the highways and towns with their hustle and bustle, spreading their noise and light pollution regardless of time of day, month or season. The stars glittered across the sky like a smear of opal dust. They lay on the velvet background of the night sky: a cloudy brush stroke that cast no light of its own, existing only as a background to the fears and worries of a day now gone.

No shadows, no shapes, just a smothering, omnipresent darkness casting its claim of silence and engulfing the present, seemingly blocking out time and hope and all thoughts of the future.

But the past, ah, the past, it leaked through, didn’t it? Under the folded edges of the darkness, through the weave of the night’s fabric, from the very air itself, the past and its pain, regrets and unbearable finality crept into this close and empty void. And there seemed to be no escape, no way to turn aside the tide. For it came not in waves but as a mist. It was not there to grasp or confront but still moved through, over and around everything that made up the moment she now confronted.

The moment she did not want nor had ever cared to see. That moment had arrived with the darkness, and she was powerless to push it back. This was not a Pandora’s box to wail and scream over with regret and cries of denial. There was no lid to slam shut, no box to hurl and smash against a royal wall. There was no symbol of failure or self-inflicted misery to rail against. There was just Meredith, alone with Meredith. And with nothing and no one by her side. And with no excuses left.