The woods beckoned her and she went. The early morning light bathed her shivering body, her steps were swift as she strove to avoid the touch of the cold earth against her bare soles. Today something summoned, and as always, she obeyed the summons, hoping it was THAT.
In the freezing air, her breath crystalized and fell away into the gentle white mist rising from the forest floor, creeping out from the surface of the lake.
It was the lake that called this time. But what reason? Was it truely THAT? Or was it something else? No way to know yet. She struggled onward, skin contracted from the cold, woolen jacket wrapt about her bare arms. Thin, summer-weight jeans that she used for sleeping in were not enough to keep the last vestiges of winter's deathly cold claws away from her body.
All ready her body temperature was dropping. The fingers curled into the blue wool of the jacket were nearly the same color as the fabric. If she had found a mirror to look into, her lips were the same shade.
A lock of hair fell into her eyes as her now-numb feet stumbled over the sticks and branches left from the harsh winter.
She continued to press onward, aware only of a tugging sensation in her breast as she moved towards her goal. Her feet betrayed her yet again and she stumbled forward, falling.
The icy shock of the water against her skin caused her to gasp with the icy-firey pain of it. Her open mouth sucked in water that rooted, ice-cold, in her chest to spread it's fingers outward as well as inward.
She flailed about, a deep-seated instinct forcing her limb to seek ground, but getting them tangled in her jacket instead. Her clothing weighted her down, dragging at her body as her limbs went numb.
Pain lanced through her chest as she struggled to breathe. "Not like this," she thought. "No pain, that's what I wanted. Just the sleep of forever. This Hurts. Why do I hurt? Make it stop..."
The icy cold reached her throat, then her chin, her lips, the few gasps of air she had received drowned once more with the deadly chill water.
It swept over her nose, then her eyes, and finally her scalp, digging it's icy fingers of death into her brain.
Her body twisting as it continued to struggled, only weakly now, against the dragging water, her mind slowed to a crawl.
"Help.... Please.... It.... Hurts...."
Her final struggle, her final words, nothing more than a shiver in the murky cold of Hell.
