Her hair glowed and enshadowed in straight horizontal lines as the warm first light of dawn danced across her frame. It cast a light but defined shadow on the creme wall behind her, that rose and fell with a breathing motion as her body gently turned. The light danced within the tiny crystals of frost that that gathered about her toes. Her skin was pure and spotless but for a blackening ring around her delicate neck and at the extremities.
The most terrible thing was that to him, she still radiated beauty. Unending affection and insurmountable loss, age-hardened attraction incomprehensible disgust at her change, familiarity and the alien unfamiliarity of the dead danced and battled through his head. Were he able to comprehend it, he might've imagined he felt like a young boy at an open casket funeral. He could not. If this feeling was a noise, it would be deafening, if it were a light, blinding. Above it all was the fear, The deep sense of dread that saturated his body, as if all sanctuary in this world exited on the back of her last breath. He took one look into her empty eyes, and jolted awake.
