'Bright. Bright...'

For the first few minutes, that was all the girl could perceive. Then the wind, the heat of the sun, the scratch of that within which she lay, and pain. She sat up. Squares of green sprawled out before her, endless to the horizon. She watched the grass move in waves with the wind. Her mind was empty of thought, save for the barest of basic.

'Hungry. Itchy...'

The girl stood up weakly, fell, but succeeded in staying up the second time and surveyed the space around her.

'A field. This is a field. I am in a field. Those are bushes. That is grass.'

She looked at her hands, then at her clothes. An old white t-shirt and blue and grey striped pajama pants. It did not feel familiar, but nothing did, and somehow did not seem to be cause for concern. A sense of urgency flitted at the edges but she could not grasp it. It was, as dreams tend to be, just how it was.

It eventually occurred to her that standing in a field was not amounting to anything constructive and she slowly made her way across the moor towards a narrow dirt road, each step purposefully placed.

‘Roads go places.'

This particular road was upon a particularly steep hill, and so the obvious direction to go was down.

‘Rocks make my feet hurt. Don't put feet on rocks.'

Whether she walked for minutes or hours, she couldn't say. All there was was forward until such time that she arrived Somewhere.
That first somewhere was a dilapidated shack. A man in old jeans and a checkered shirt reclined in a rocking chair in front of it; a beer in hand and a radio at foot.

The girl stared at him.

The man stared back. "The hell happened to you? You fall in a chipper? Wots with tha hair o' yor?"

The girl cocked her head, but said nothing. Some of the words made sense to her, but she couldn't quite find their meanings.

The man stood up to get a better look.

"You speak English? Jeeze you're a right mess. Wotcher name, kid?"

She sensed that a response was expected, and soon grew visibly frustrated with being unable to.

The man sighed. This was one of those situations that called for the police, but that wasn't how things were done. Not around here. He pulled a transceiver out of his pocket.

"Hey Yeller, I got a situation up front. Some beat up kid just wander' in, don't speak a lick."

A fuzzy sound answered back and an argument commenced, but this was of no interest to the girl, and so she wandered past unnoticed to the path beyond.