She had walked for days towards the ghost town, walking to join the ranks of a thousand before her. She was a mess. Make up running down her face, and footprints covering the puzzle pieces of her own heart that she held in her hands. She sobbed silently as she stepped towards a senescent road sign, and through the blur of tears she read ' E D EN ', with the faded shapes of where letters had been when this part of the country had been inhabited and there was enough money for signs to be kept in a good state of repair. She urged herself on. One foot in front of the other. Almost there. Almost among those who would understand, she hoped. She trudged on toward the infamous town centre. There surely couldn't have been much further to go. She turned left, away from the sign, and continued on. One foot always just in front of the other.
Two hours of trudging later, she found it. A crude wooden sign attached to a fountain of six metal waves upon which rested small rusted fish declared 'Join us, the heartbroken,' but how could she join them when there was nobody around? And there was nobody around; shops were closed up, houses were falling apart and not a soul was to be seen. The silence was so complete as to be almost blinding, although that may have been the setting sun. She perched on the stone rim of the now wild flower-filled fountain and took a deep breath, wiping her eyes as she looked around herself.
Directly to her right was an array of rotting picnic tables and rusted benches, and, beyond that, a run down café that she could only assume had once been idyllic. Flowers that would have bloomed bright colours across the wall lay brown and dead on the floor where they had fallen amongst the smashed glass of the window above them. Paint flaked off the delicately carved tables and chairs that sat outside the locked doors, which faced a river far below a stone wall. To the left was a large steel anchor, resting on its side, partly submerged in the grassy bank it lay on. She moved closer to it. A large, square, stone basin was set into the ground. It had almost bench like slabs jutting out from the sides, as if it were a meeting place. Between it and the anchor sat a small rowing boat, filled with neatly planted poppies and roses, a stark contrast to the weeds of the fountain. She turned back to the road opposite the river. Great buildings lined the other side of it, except for routes toward what looked from where she was to be a high street. All of them appeared to be dark and closed up. Signs advertising the shops were unreadable under all the dirt they were covered in, and it seemed she would be sleeping on a bench that night.
She sat on one, sighed, and lay down for a long night in the cold.
