I ran until my heart exploded, past trees and shrubs and through some tall grass, until the ground started squinching under my socks and I heard, over the sound of my gasping breaths, the trickle of what must have been a creek.

At some point my heart popped out of my chest and I stopped, because you want to stop when that happens.

I turned to face my pursuers. And they weren’t there.

“Well, fuck,” I gasped, sinking to the ground. Which was surprisingly lush, like some sort of fairy garden type thing, mossy and pillowy.

“They wanted to scare me,” I panted, talking to no one. “I’m okay. They just wanted to scare me.”

Mission accomplished.

I lifted my feet. My socks were torn to shreds, but my feet were shockingly intact, if throbbing and distinctly pink in hue. The trickle of water was clearly coming from somewhere on my left. In the interests of a soothing foot bath, I hobbled in that direction with my skates slung over my shoulder, until I found the tiny stream of water winding its way through a road of slimy green rocks.

I sank down on the edge, peeled off my now full-of-holes socks, and lowered my feet to the cool water with an audible sigh of relief only the crows in the trees heard. After a few minutes of the water swirling around my toes, my heart was finally beating a reasonable number of beats per minute. I peeled my wrist cuffs off and shoved them in my pocket. Lowered my fingers to dangle in the water along with my feet, which had started to pulse.

“Okay, Greenville,” I grumbled, “I have to say. Like, don’t be mad because I don’t think I can take any more of your wrath, but, okay, I’ll admit it, I’m starting to give up on you.”

I looked up to the sky through the trees. “Don’t tell anyone else this, like don’t tell Lucy or Millie or Berry, but I’m, like, just up to here with trying to get you to not hate me and feeling like every good thing I get comes with something horrible. Like. I feel like you owe me some sort of sign.”

I clarified. “A good sign.”

I paused. “Okay, I mean this creek is nice. Don’t get me wrong. The world needs water to live, I get that. But at this point I feel like it needs to be something bigger than just water for my aching feet. You know? Like I need something that’s a reason to keep trying. I don’t want to ask for a miracle but—”

There was, I-swear-to-disco, a perfectly timed loud splash, and suddenly there it was, over my left shoulder.

A horse.

Is that a miracle?