Wandering Girl

Grey

A girl wakes from sleep.
She's surrounded by an ashy heap.
She starts to draw pictures as if in sand.
Smiling figures going hand in hand.

Their heads are too round, like lumpy pumpkins. Their lips are wavy and their lopsided eyes are poka dots.

I'm sure real people don't look like this. The girl thinks. Though I can't think of any examples of real people. She continues to draw in the ashes, as best she can.

She draws crowns on them for good measure. It doesn't matter what royalty looks like, does it? She wasn't sure what being royal entailed, exactly.
She was sure it wasn't looks though.

The girl stands up, and ashes fall from the slope of her skirts. She watches curiously as the soft substance drifts like snow.

The girl walks away from the ashes. She's surrounded on all sides by charred walls and wood.
There are ashes everywhere, really.

It's a huge building. It looks like a fairytale palace turned dark with the smell of smoke. The halls stretch forward in front of her and go on until she can't see the ends.

It's so very empty out where she was. No furnitures or things or people. So empty.

She curiously began to walk down a shadowy, endless hall.

She's going to have to do a quite a bit of walking to get away from the ashes.

I wonder if real people really do look like my pictures. The girl thought. Big, lumpy heads and dots for eyes, with skinny little bodies.
She felt up her own head. I wonder if I look like that. It doesn't feel that way though. I wonder if I am, then, a real person. Maybe if I find someone else to see me, they will say if so or not.

What would I be though, if not a real person? She wondered and wondered.
Sounds dreadful either way. Is what she concluded, but she didn't know why the thought came to her.

The girl felt the skeleton of what used to be a carpet under her feet, and she trailed a hand on the crisp, burnt wall.

The girl wandered into the dark unknown of the hallway...