I kept walking — not out of a desire to move forward, nor even as a conscious evasion of what I was, slowly, subtly, becoming, but because a remnant of motion, lodged in my tissues, still survived the exhaustion of will. A flow of gentle inertia, like a fossilized beat from an ancient rhythm, something older than me, than my fatigue, than my fear, which replayed itself through my gestures, without prompting, without order, without clear memory — simply because there was nothing else left to do but continue. A current inherited from a forgotten breath which, perhaps, guided me not towards a place, but towards a form of hollow survival, a faint possibility of not entirely sinking. Or at least, of not sinking alone.
But I no longer knew what I was walking with.
Nor with whom.
