<div class="floatleft">(http://slodive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dreadlock-hairstyles/red-dreads.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Eva Bellamy (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=250173.msg12432737#msg12432737)<br/><strong>City | Date | Time:</strong>Land's End (https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/landsend.htm), San Francisco, CA | July 6, 2017 | 8:00 am<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Markus Löfgren (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=250173.msg12387011#msg12387011)<br/><strong>Content:</strong><em>Is it worth the pain to stay?</em><br/><hr/><br/>The cedars were not even a century old, but the man-made resemblance to old, windswept forest was enough shelter for Eva. She'd lain her head to rest at night beneath far less than the deep green canopy overhead - though not these past two months.<br/><br/>No... Only days ago, there had been a real roof over her head.  She missed the stars, invisible even through the windows because of the ambient city light, but Eva had learned to live with this, a small price to pay for the bright soul who had invited her to her home for only a short time.  She slept with pillows and blankets on a mattress - and stranger still for this feral wanderer?  The space she once shared had been occupied with another human being - someone whose kindness and compassion had once convinced her the company of other people did not have to be hurtful or terrifying.  That it did not have to cause her pain to be among men and women again...<br/><br/>Until she woke to discover she'd been abandoned here, left behind and all alone in this great city full of strangers.  A soft, quiet sob shook her slender shoulders, curled up as she was beneath the shade of the cedars.  Eva missed the roof overhead, just a little bit.  Still, she couldn't stay in that now-empty apartment, all alone in a place that really wasn't even hers, and never had been.  Memories lurked in every corner, beautiful memories suddenly turned so painful.  Conversation, laughter - even comfortable silences while reading a book or sketching - small pleasures, true, but all new to Eva, all over again.<br/><br/>But now?  Now everything Eva had to her name was packed once more in her old, sturdy backpack, Army-Navy store issued.  She had no real reason<em> not</em>to have gotten rid of it after she moved into the apartment.  Was it instinct then, that had her shove it in the back of a closet?  A premonition of how this all-too-short attempt to return to something like normal would end?<br/><br/>Eva lifted her head from the cradle of her knees, her eyes red-rimmed and half-lidded with exhaustion and hurt.  Land's End, San Francisco.  The incessant city hum of cars and people in perpetual motion was too far from this place to intrude on the roar of crashing surf.  And yet she had only to walk a few hundred yards, to the trails or to the old landmark buildings, to know she'd not abandoned humanity all over again - not yet at least.  Land's End was unique in all this mammoth city jungle, the one place that stood between the wilds her aching heart yearned to retreat to once more, and the humanity she had only just begun to know all over again.<br/><br/><em>'What did I do?'</em><br/><br/>For the first time in over a year, Eva dared lay her heart bare, to place her trust in another human being.  And with that trust, perhaps there was even a measure of growing love as well - not that it mattered anymore.  She was gone.  Not dead, no - Eva knew that somehow, some way, she would know if she was dead, or even hurt and in need of rescuing, just as she'd done for Eva once upon a time.  She was simply...<em>Gone.</em>Eva had been left behind, abandoned like an unwanted cat or a pit bull in a derelict house.  No rhyme.  No reason.  No point at all to be made, but for the fact she'd been utterly forgettable, with no more value than an empty food wrapper or a broken toy...<br/><br/>Eva sighed softly, wiping at her red, tear-wet cheeks with the palm of her hand.  The small animals of Land's End had warned her of the approaching humans, birds and otters and rodents alike scattering before them as they moved down the trails.  They had gathered in the distance and were approaching even now, a group of people come to descend on Land's End en masse for she knew not what.  She remained where she was, fairly confident none would notice her here if she were very still and silent.  Grimacing, Eva lay her hands about her aching head, as if that could somehow contain the pain, the sorrow and yes, the anger too, all locked up tight in her skull.