With great gulping breaths her feet hit the ground too hard jarring her shins and her knees...

In the dream she’s running down the hill and sliding down the hill and then hitting the bottom and running again

toward the trees

and the thought of safety and the sky above is filled with the sound of her pursuers calling back and forth to one another coordinating their flight

and preparing for attack

and as she runs her lungs try to fill but they’re not fast enough with great gulping breaths her feet hit the ground too hard jarring her shins and her knees and her back

but she can’t stop

she keeps pushing her legs pushing her lungs pulling her eyes starting to water and lose focus as she enters the woods and seeks a place where she

can stop for just a moment

but there is nowhere there is too much scraggly undergrowth and twigs catch her hair and scratch her face and arms and knees as they

keep pumping keep pumping

but the ground is softer now with the leaves and needles underfoot at least that offers some relief but she can’t go much farther without some semblance of a rest so its just a few more strides before

her legs give out

and she falls to the ground and has just the strength to roll under the low bushes before she can move no more and lies gasping her chest heaving over and over with the attempt to stop the burning in her chest and she tries to push some leaves and bracken in the way to hide herself but her arms feel like lead and her body feels like it's stuck to the ground and then

it is stuck to the ground

and the mud is seeping up her sides and covering her skin and now she can’t breath because her pores of suffocated and the mud is reaching up to her face so at last she relaxes because ultimately this is better than what her pursuers had in store and with her last thought she wonders if maybe she’ll

come back as a tree.