The sweet, lavender chamomile tea flows over his tongue as he sits at his desk, watching the pixels slowly moving across the screen of his laptop. The single screen in what was otherwise total darkness did nothing to help his splitting headache, and he couldn’t focus on his game, or on anything else. His headache roared as images pulsed through his head. Images of the abuse he had directed towards others, images of the misdeeds and injustices which he had perpetrated, but most prominently of all, images of a red haired maiden whom he had once been exceptionally close to. Now, however, thanks to his own actions she would forever elude him. At the time he had believed his choice to be correct, but in retrospect one will always doubt. He had bought this tea because it had been her favorite, he willingly put himself through this torture again and again, looking to find an answer to the riddle known as human nature, or at least find solace in his efforts. Instead, however, his forays into his own psyche had left him drained, with even worse of a headache than before. He closed his eyes in an attempt to alleviate the pain, and accidentally drifted off.

   When he awoke, the world was different. His tea had gone cold, and his laptop had shut itself off. He tried the lightswitch to no avail, a power outage, most likely. He began to hear something scratching at his window, the high pitched squeal reigniting his previous head pains. He drew his curtain back to reveal that the Missoula evening had fading into the blackness of night, and had brought with it a terrible storm, most likely the culprit of the power outage. Something was odd about this storm however, the more he stared into the night, the more it seemed to transform. He was experiencing the world through tunnel vision, hyper focused on iron darkness in front of him as everything else began to blur. The raging storm seemed to speak to him, offering him answers to the questions that had plagued him for months now. While initially being suspicious of his own sanity, he knew that now, things were not the same as they had been mere hours ago. Perhaps he had discovered this knew perspective on life through his constant internal searching, or maybe a higher power had taken pity on him, but whatever the case, a talking storm seemed shockingly unsuspicious to him now. The swirling darkness outside beckoned to him, and the strong winds had promised him deliverance. His mind was begging him to accept the Night’s offer, and his body was slowly beginning to oblige. He opened the window, letting in a gust of wind that scattered the papers of off his desk. He placed his feet on the windowsill, leaning his body outside to face the howling night. The only thing holding him back was one hand clinging to the window frame, still apprehensive about the prospect of trusting that they wouldn’t simply fall to their deaths, but he forced this hand to submit, letting himself fly into the gale.

   As he glided, he marveled at how far away his troubles seemed. In his mind, everything he had once stressed endlessly about was inconsequential to him now. He watched as he drifted in front of the tree that had scraped at his window earlier. He watched his neighbors houses, seeing them from a whole new perspective. As he marveled at the beauty that the birds were so often privileged to receive, he failed to notice that something was wrong. The same neighbors he had just spent his time marveling at would find his body in his front lawn the next morning, left lifeless by the impact of the fall.